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HESPERUS 



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OTHER POEMS 



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BY / 

CHARLES DE KAY 
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NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS 

1880 



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Copyright 

1880 

By Charles de Kay 



All rights reserved 



NEW YORK: J. J. LITTLE & CO., PRINTERS, 
10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE. 



POEMS OUT OF TOWN. 



PEACE. 

Keen gleams the wind, and all the ground 
Is bare and chapped with bitter cold. 

The ruts are iron ; fish are found 
Encased in ice as in a mold ; 

The frozen hilltops ache with pain 
And shudders tremble down each shy 

Deep rootlet burrowing in the plain ; — 
Now mark the sky. 

Softly she pulls a downy veil 
Before her clear Medusa face ; 

This, falling slow, abroad doth trail 
Across the wold a feathery trace, 

Whereunder soon the moaning earth 
Aslumber stretches dreamily, 

Forgot both pain and summer's mirth, 
Soothed by the sky. 



SONG. 

THE winter woods, the winter woods, 
They bevel best with all our moods, 

With hardihood and wild despair, 
With tender love and joyousness: 
The crimes of cities they redress, 

And broken faiths repair. 

The winter woods, the winter woods 
Are better far than house and goods, 

Than food and raiment better far, 
Than gilded walls and canopies : 
They break but do not stop the breeze, 

And never hide a star. 

The winter woods, the winter woods, 
All graces lurk within their buds ; 

With melodies in branches fanned 
A lofty dance they indicate ; 
All bookish craft they subtly state, 

With colors fill the land. 



Song. 

The winter woods, the winter woods 
Are loveliest ere the April floods, 

In naked swaying grandeur seen, 
Before they know the name of blame, 
Before the May cries, Hide for shame 

Your charms in robes of green ! 



WITH LIFE— HOPE. 

NOT a breath ! 
How a master-wizard's hand 
Has to perfect stillness banned 
Every snow-heaped minaret 
Of the cedars thickly set ! 

Yonder grasses 

Down the passes 
Feel a spell that's neither life nor death. 

Then the sky! 
All the misty webs are brushed 
Into solid cloud-rows, crushed 
'Gainst the stony blue in ranks : 
Sun and wind upon those banks, 

Nowise haunted, 

Yet enchanted, 
Vainly force or blandishments would try. 



With Life — Hope. 

But this leaf? 
Near it nothing life betrays, 
Yet alive on branch it sways, 
Sere and merry. Still to go 
After comrades 'neath the snow 
Is it trying? 
What from dying 
Keeps a thing of summer-life so brief? 

Ah, behold ! 
What is snugly woven up 
In the oak-leafs crumpled cup ? 
Cradled warm in gray cocoon 
Lies a lady moth : in June, 

With the swallow 

From her hollow 
Leaf outsprung, to flit o'er wood and wold. 



SONG FOR WINTER. 

ACROSS the ice, across the ice 

On wood and steel we sink and rise, 

Approach, recede and whirl about, 

Engrave initials in and out ; 

Then he who tries a wintry cooing 

Will quickly find a mischief brewing, 

For she will fly and he must follow 

Where the ice is false and hollow ; 

She'll lead him heavy and blind and slow 

Over the tickly-benders O ! 

Over the snow, over the snow 
On steel and wood and furs we go ! 
The sleigh-bell merrily madly chinks 
And harness in the moonlight blinks ; 
Cheeks are rosy, eyes are bright, 
Cupid's frosty bow has might ; 
Two shoes under the furs must keep 
Two shoes warm and free from sleep ; 



Song for Winter. 

Words are saucy, breath is sweet, 
Comes a bump — and lips will meet ! 

Around the coals, around the coals 
In circle pass the steaming bowls. 
We sing and gossip half the night, 
As if the niggard sun to spite. 
The sailor yarns ; the traveler lies ; 
We swallow hard, and wink our eyes. 
When stories take the wits to task 
The key to doubt is in the flask. 
We drink confusion to the snow 
And laugh to hear the north winds blow. 

Deep down in bed, deep down in bed 
We burrow snug when all's been said : 
One genial moment list the gale 
Against the windows dash the hail, 
The next, swim out on tides of dream 
Where things outlandish usual seem. 
But here's the face we love and cherish, 
The heavenly soul for whom we perish ! 
Blissful we wake : — and white and warm 
We clasp the pillow in our arm ! 



ODE TO WINTER. 

SOVEREIGN of my heart, how glorious is thy splendor, 
How thy face of snowplains veined with azure 
streams, 
Eyes of lakes o'erfrozen, are radiant yet untender — 
Tresses brown of woodlands — glance of cool sun- 
beams ! 
When the north wind chideth, how rings out thy 
laughter ; 
When the south wind pleadeth, how unstirred thy 

heart ; 
In thy strength defying all that cometh after, 

Child in form of goddess, unconquerable thou art ! 
Is there naught can take from thee 
Thy too brave prosperity ? 

What though glad the thoughtless : still is loving 
better 

Than an empty spending of selfish days and free. 
Who shall curb thy freedom ; who, a blooming fetter 

Lay about thy deep soul, if soul there be to thee ? 



Ode to Winter. n 

Underneath the snow-drifts down the woody hollow 

Ferns are green and mosses wait a coming word, 
Frogs below the wood ponds, and mayhap the swal- 
low, 
Dream they hear the whistling of a summer bird ; 
Only thou dost nowise care 
What the fiery Spring may dare. 

Laurel for that master, apple blooms and roses, 

Who can teach the lesson winter will not learn ! 
Winter, I implore thee, list when he discloses 

Hopes of early spring-tide, tells how leaflets yearn, 
Grasses seek the sunlight, birds their mates discover, 

How the world is action, life and budding change ; 
Winter, bright and terrible, hear thine ardent lover ; 

Stand aloof no longer dread and hard and strange ! 
Melt, O winter ; fear no harm 
Happed within thy lover's arm ! 



THE WINTRY ALPHABET. 

UPON a sunbaked southern plain 

And through old jungles ever blooming 

What shapes would human hands retain 

On even surface to explain 
The thoughts that in the mind were looming? 

Nor plain was marked, nor mount, nor wood ; 

These looked unchanged the heavens under, 
But bulls that charged and huts that stood 
And deer on hill and fish in flood — 

They roused man's wish and wonder. 

And so, their figures daubed on bark, 

On hides, on mud bricks, formed his data, 
And through the aeons we call dark 
He fanned with hieroglyphs the spark 
Of learning to an alphabeta. 



The Wintry Alphabet. 

Not so the Northman. Half his year 

He mused on one of Nature's pages, 
And watched, untouched his bow and spear, 
Through the wide gleaming snows uprear 
Their heads these letters, dumb for ages. 

On yonder sloping crest of hill 

Behold the bare elms, oaks and birches : 
Each tree's a letter cut with skill, 
Sharp-edged, a text for good or ill, 

A script not hid when wisdom searches. 

The tree trunks, how they leap from snow ! 

Each several crown, what free resplendence ! 
Some day like this a bard aglow 
With nervous forethought notched them slow 

To runes — and awed his rude descendants. 



THE LAST PINE. 

WHERE the fallow-colored hill 
Juts against a cloudy wreath — 
Gray the sky, the ground beneath 
White with shreds from winter's quill- 
Holds a pine of giant girth 
All alone a patience grim 
In the ghastly cold, the dim 
Sifted light that wraps the earth ; 

Like a soldier strictly charged 
Never from his watch to yield : 
Long ago was hushed the field, 

All his comrades, long discharged : 

Solid hangs the icy tear, 

Numb his arms with creeping frost, 
And his senses four are lost 

In a bitter strife to hear: 



The Last Pine. 15 

Yet unmoved he keepeth post, 

Dim of sight but list'ning still, 

Lest across the lonely hill 
Call the bugles of the host! 



Once upon a silent day 

Heaved the tree such breath profound, 

Air was carded into sound, 
Thus the pine was heard to say: 



" One by one, 
Though they towered high and wide, 
Sank my brothers by my side, 
Fell away my friends of youth : 
Death on them had never ruth. 

One by one 
Dropped my warming arms of green 
Till I stand of branches lean ; 
Straight the woodpecker may shoot 
From my crown to knotted root : 

All is done ! 



1 6 The Last Pine. 

I am past. 
Once I dwelt with fellows dear, 
Once I felt the green sod near ; 

Year by year 
In the choir of our wood 
Crashed a singer where he stood, 
And the boughs that rained forever, 
Lowest first then upward ever 

On his bier, 
Me with their wide loss did sever 
Still the more from things I love 
Into this drear air above. 

I might last 
Happy, if my shadow cast 
One deep roof of solid cool 
On a wise man, on a fool, 
On the lowest shape that passed ; 
If the sun, like this harsh air, 
Lingered in my scattered hair ; 
But no grace from me descends 
While I drag to useless ends 

Life at last." 



THE MOTH. 

WHERE for carpet lay the gaunt brown trees below 

Sifted snow, 
On a cruel sundown in a losing strife 

Writhed a life ; 
Quaking pale-brown wings and tender coming breath 

Fought with death. 

Frail the moth and weak till warmed by heat of hand ; 

Closely scanned 
All the horizon showed no garden summer-sweet 

For his feet, 
Yet undoubting, from the savior palm upreared, 

Straight he steered 

Forthright to his one place in this dual world. 

Winter-hurled, 
Fine sleet stung him as he beat the evening late 

Toward his mate 
Where, by paths untrod, but O, dreamt of, 

Lay his love. 



ROBBER BLUEBACK. 

THOUGH it lacks two months of May- 
Frosts have nipped a genial thaw 

And the melted snow is thin 

Crisp and harsh to Renard's claw. 

White are curves where paths have been 
Winding through the ruddy swamp, 

Pensive-gray the circling trees 
Etch the sky in gentle pomp. 

Yet is spring within the breeze, 
Gay in heart of yonder fowl 
Screaming near a brooding owl 
His jay— jay— -jay ! 

Wicked dandy, have you come 
Dressed in suit of brightest blue 

Long among our hills to roam 

Till the woods your presence rue ? 

Malice sure your notes betray 

While you flirt about each gray 



Robber Bliteback. 

Brushy top and chestnut crest 
Jotting down in thievish brain 

Just the lay of every nest; 
So, when summer's here again — 

Suck the eggs — away you fly 

With the parent-frighting cry 
Oi jay— jay— jay ! 

Ah the dainty rascal jay ! 

Now's the time abroad to fling 
With the heart and limbs of youth 

Ere the fickle minded spring 
All the land with lakes endu'th ! 
Now across the oak-swamp race 
Following swift his airy trace ; 
Hound him down the icy path 
Till he chatters full of wrath ; 
Chase him past the helpless owl 
And loudly mock the coward fowl 
With, jay— jay-— jay ! 



J 9 



SONG FOR SPRING. 

LlLAC clouds and purple tinted branches, 

Solid blues within the wintry sky, 
Tawny browns o'er windy desolate marshes, 

Gleams that blind where ice and snow-banks lie ! 
See, the violets call from out the grasses, 

Look, the purple answers from the ground ; 
Azure melts and to that warbler passes, 

Sudden, a skyfleck on the fences found ! 
The turning year 
Is here, here, here, 

Daily the joyous hilltops run 

Nearer, more near 
To your high seat, O golden glorious sun ! 

Angry winds that clashed their airy pinions 

Round the homestead prune dead leaves away; 

Rains that stung when they were sleet or snowflake 
Ease the buds that lurk below the clay ; 



Song for Spring. 2 1 

For they know the one great god is coming, 
Lord of all, whose hair disparteth gloom. 
List to the south — his herald bees are humming ! 
Lo, how his brow reddens the ocean spume ! 
His heart so hot 
Has altered naught, 
Now that the year around hath spun 

All hail be brought 
To you, the god and giver of life, O sun ! 

Soon the molten gold that brings no sadness 
Thick shall lie on pasture land and moor ; 
Soon the broad unstinted sun shall gladden 

Gates of rich men, hovels of the poor : 
Bat-wing' d moths, in boles of trees entombed, 

Feel the root-blood through the twigs aspire, 
Stir impatient, sure their pinions humid 
Soon shall dry before the all-fostering fire. 
That Lord so good 
orgets no bud, 
'Tis you, you, you whose charm has won 

From yonder sod 
To heaven that high and branching oak, O 
sun! 



22 Song for Spring. 

Birds by thousand far off groves are wending 

Northward still their solitary way ; 
Soon their mates will find them in each forest, 

Field or marsh while yet the woods are gray. 
Hear them laugh in liquid notes and cooing, 

Watch them sail in airiest curving flight, 
'Tis but earth the wondrous sun god wooing, 
Tis the darkness yearning for the light ! 
Wake to their voice 
And take your choice, 
Ye men and maidens every one ; 

Rejoice, rejoice 
With you, O gold-cored lover of earth, great 
sun ! 



WOOD LAUREL. 

WHITE in coverts of the wood 
Where the even shadows brood, 
On waving carpets young of fern 
See the clusters steadfast burn, — 
Eyes of joy amid the dark 
Lighting up the forest stark ! 
While the pine is bending over, 
Tenderly, a rugged lover, 
Thankful faces we must wear 
Since the laurel blooms so fair. 

At what altar shall we pray ? 
For his neighbor who shall say ? 
Each devout may draw his moral 
For the generous blooming laurel. 
Let the priest of gods triune 
List to Nature's triple rune, 
Symbols find in leaf and petal 
Which no councils can unsettle, 



24 Wood Laurel. 

Giving praise as well as prayer 
That the laurel blooms so fair. 

Here the lover of one God 
One law reads in oak and sod ; 
Swedenborg's etherial sons 
May see the woodsprite for the nonce, 
And Moslem who toward Mecca yearns 
May spread his carpet 'mid the ferns 
And watching with adoring eyes 
These petals tint with pink sunrise, 
May lift to Allah thankful prayer 
That the laurel blooms so fair. 

Buddhist here can fix his gaze 
Where encounter beauty's rays, 
In this lovely foam discern 
Sign of Nature's yeasty churn ; 
And China's wise and formal seer 
Beholds the perfect symbol here 
Of work and work's consummate fruit 
In flower, in bush and groping root. 
These a moment more may spare 
Since the laurel blooms so fair. 



Wood Laurel. 

Laurel once was victor's weed, 
This one's not of warlike breed ; 
Blooming, lost in forest dense, 
With a shy luxuriance, 
She is glad to be the bush 
Favored by the brown-winged thrush, 
Loving more his melting song 
Than the plaudits of the throng ; — 
O, that I the woods might share 
Which the laurel makes so fair ! 



25 



TO SILVER LAKE. 

Ah, little lake where the sleepy cows 

Rest in the autumn night, 
Rest under high fantastic boughs 
Of the oak, slant gleams of white ! 

Till your springs run dry 

You may smile on the sky, 
You may pout and storm and bluster, 

May whisper with reed 

And in dark heart breed 
Deep lily-pad secrets acluster. 

But oh, little lake, when man, the ant, 

Gnaws at your flowery brink, 
Your soul will fail, your pride grow scant, 
Your cows low in vain for drink ; 

With dim tortured eyes 

You will beg of the skies 
For rain as thick as a river, 

Or else that a quake 

The hard earth break 
And drain you at once and forever. 



ON GREAT SOUTH BAY. 

O, HERE behind that rosary emerald-gray 

Whose brown and opal beads are mounds of sand, 

To cut and cut the turquoise of the bay, 

Yet feel the greater paths beyond the land. . . 

O, held from death by boards a shaving thick 
And by the pleasure of a fair wind blowing, 

Or snatched at by the spray-hand of each quick 
Relentless wave forever by me flowing. . . 

Day after day to toil behind that veil. . . 

The tiny ring-neck hid by dazzling shore 
Turned, ages past, his piping to a wail 

To pierce, sad, constant, through the breaker's roar. 

Out, out beyond these long dun sandy coils 
Beckons this morn a red heart of surprise 

Just where the fog-veil, sliding ruddy, foils 
A shape within the tragic-deep sunrise 



28 On Great South Bay. 

Which, voiceless, speaks : " Why drag ye empty hours 
Until, the last locked bay and farthest strait 

Passed, the inevitable ocean lowers 

Dark to faint heart that leaves all till too late ? " 

Ay, why vain shallows, adverse currents small 
Of duty try, when these light cockles, thus 

With strong soul dashed against the breaker-wall, 
May ride, or broken, may give life to us ? 

Home — country — friends? What hollow words at 
best 

Which drench not souls with bliss as doth the roar 
From giant pipes of color far to west — 

Dumb, dumb to human ears forevermore. 



THE WHIPPOORWILL. 

WHIPPOORWILL, whippoorwill, whippoorwill ! 

How I hate your frenzied note 

Stinging like a driver's switch 

Through the midnight black as pitch ! 

Evil sights have you to show : 

Wearied, anxious, crazed with woe, 

A woman into madness driven 

By crimes unheard-of unforgiven 

Is striving with a shapeless throat 

For words that make the blood stand still. 

Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill ! 
Ah, the awful nights ! Your cry 
Seared the brain as drops of lead 
Seared the living and the dead 
In the days of death, when Grant, 
Firm of soul as adamant, 
Hurled his luckless regiments 
On the rebels' firm defense. 



30 The WhippcorwilL 

Bird malignant, well may I 
Shudder at your moanings shrill ! 

Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill ! 
Bird that horrors must rehearse, 
How you told the seconds through 
(Hours of anguish, years of rue !) 
When, before the earthworks lying, 
Men were killed without replying ; 
When each moment through the black 
Sprang a flash ! — a rifle's crack — 
A groan — on you a dying curse — 
And one more valiant heart was still ! 

Whippoonvill, zvhippoorzvill, whippoorwill ! 

Desolate wailer of the night, 

Be henceforward you to men 

Sign of murder, fever, pain 

And symbol of that ashen star 

Which rules the hell of civil war. 

But souls hereafter, sensitive, 

Shall list you moan and deeply grieve, ■ 

Shall tremble at a nation's plight 

And dream that wrong the right shall kill. 



The WhippoorwilL 3 1 

Whipftoorzvill, zvhiftftoorwill, whippoorwill ! 

Here where slaves have laughed and sighed, 

Loathed their chains and loved them too, 

In one note condensed by you 

All the sadness of their laughter, 

All their anguish shall hereafter 

Pour in ceaseless woe and blind 

A wordless tale of men unkind ! 

Through boundless light shall eagles ride ; 

Yours be the tangle past the hill. 



Richmond, Va. 



THE TORNADO. 

Whose eye has marked his gendering? On his 

throne 
He dwells apart in roofless caves of air, 
Born of the stagnant, blown of the glassy heat 
O'er the still mere Sargasso. When the world 
Has fallen voluptuous, and the isles are grown 
So bold they cry, God sees not ! — as a rare 
Sunflashing iceberg towers on high, and fleet 
As air-ships rise, by upward currents whirled, 
Even so the bane of lustful islanders 
Wings him aloft. And scarce a pinion stirs. 

There gathering hues, he stoopeth down again, 
Down from the vault. Locks of the gold-tipped cloud 
Fly o'er his head ; his eyes, Saint Elmo flames ; 
His mouth, a surf on a red coral reef. 
Embroidered is his cloak of dark blue stain 
With lightning jags. Upon his pathway crowd 
Dull Shudder, wan-faced Quaking, Ghastly-dreams. 
And after these, in order near their chief, 



The Tornado. 33 

Start, Tremor, Faint-heart, Panic and Affray, 
Horror with blanching eyes, and limp Dismay 

Unroll a gray-green carpet him before 
Swathed in thick foam : thereon adventuring, bark 
Need never hope to live ; that yeasty pile 
Bears her no longer ; to the mast-head plunged 
She writhes and groans, careens, and is no more. 
Now, prickt by fear, the man-devourer shark, 
Gale-breasting gull and whale that dreams no guile 
Till the sharp steel quite to the life has lunged, 
Before his pitiless, onward-hurling form 
Hurry toward land for shelter from the storm. 

In vain. Tornado and his pursuivants, 
Whirlwind of giant bulk, and Water-spout, — 
The gruesome, tortuous devil-fish of rain, — 
Overtake them on the shoals and leave them dead. 
Doomsday has* come. Now men in speechless trance 
Glower unmoved upon the hideous rout, 
Or, shrieking, fly to holes, or yet complain 
One moment to that lordly face of dread 
Before he quits the mountain of his wave 
And strews for all impartially their grave. 



34 The Tornado. 

And as in court-yard corners on the wind 
Sweep the loose straws, houses and stately trees 
Whirl in a vortex. His unswerving tread 
Winnows the isle bare as a thresher's floor. 
His eyes are fixed ; he looks not once behind, 
But at his back fall silence and the breeze. 
Scarce is he come, the lovely wraith is sped. 
Ashamed the lightning shuts its purple door, 
And heaven still knows the robes of gold and dun, 
While placid Ruin gently greets the sun. 



ARCANA SYLVARUM. 

Hark! . . . 

What booming 

Faints on the high-strung ear? 

Through the damp woods (so dark 

No flowers are blooming) 

I hear, I hear 

The twang of harps, the leap 

Of hairy feet, and know the revel's ripe, 

While, like a coral stripe, 

The lizard cool doth creep, 

Monster, but monarch there, up the pale Indian Pipe. 

Hush ! . . . 

Your panting 

Will scare them from their game. 

Let not a foot-fall crush 

Their rites enchanting ! 

The deadwood's flame, 

Bellies of murdered fire-flies, 



36 Arcana Sylvarum. 

And glimmering moonstones thick with treasured rays 

Shall help our round-eyed gaze 

Antics unholy to surprise 

Which the ungodly crew round the red lizard plays. 

Now! . . . 
No breathing 

To spoil the heathenish dance ! 
Lest from each pendent bough 
Poison be seething, — 
A hair-fine lance 

Pierce to our brain, and slowly slay. 
But look your breathless fill, and mark them swing, 
Man and maid a-capering, 
Ugly, fair, morosely gay, 

Round the red lizard smooth, crowned for their 
wicked king. 

Back ! . . . 

Inhuman 

Are gestures, laughs, and jeers. 

Off, ere we lose the track ! 

Nor man, nor woman 

May stand your leers, 



Arcana Sylvarum. 37 

Shameless and loose, uncovered creatures ! 
Quick, lest we join their orgies in the dark ! 
Back ! For the madness stark 
Is crawling through our natures 

To touch the red lizard vile, spread on the damp 
white bark. 



ON REVISITING STATEN ISLAND. 

AGAIN ye fields, again ye woods and farms 
Slowly approach and fold me to your arms. 
The scent of June buds wraps me once again, 
The breath of grasses sighs along the plain. 
Ye elms and oaks that comforted of yore, 
I hear your welcome as I heard before ; 
The night-blue sky is etched with dusky boughs 
And at your feet the white and huddled cows 
Are breathing deeply still. Is all a dream, 
Or does the hillside with a welcome gleam ? 
Ye lofty trees, know ye your worshipper? 
Know ye a wanderer, ready to aver 
Yon branch leans downward to his eager face, 
Yon bush seems following on his happy trace! 
The cedars gossip softly, one by one, 
Leaning their heads in secret ; on and on 
The whisper spreads, from new-born larch to fir, 
Thence to the chestnut tender yet of bur, 



On Revisiting St at en Island. 39 

And now the fragrant blackberry on the moor 
Says the same word the white beech mutters o'er. 
A spice-birch on the fringes of the wood 
Has lain in wait, has heard and understood ; 
The piny phalanx nods, and up, away, 
Tree-tops have sped the name to Prince's Bay! 



SWALLOW-FLEDGE. 

In August, when the lake is low 

And myriad winged things mount the sedge 
Themselves on airs unknown to throw, 

Then downy swallowlets are fledge : 
With needless haste they veer and sweep 
Yet dare not try the greater deep. 

About the wavy tops of trees 

They join the weaving parent band, 

And since they fear the sportive breeze 
May lilt them high above the land, 

They race unsteady to and fro 

And chirp for courage as they go. 

But high above the yellowing marsh 

And plain against the level sun 
The insects rise. With twitterings harsh 

The elders rush the prey upon : 
Then swallowlets with ardor thrill ; 
The flock has whirled, and the woods are still. 



AUTUMN VIEWS. 

UNDER the red trees out in the wood 
Yellow are leaves and brown ; 

Under the evergreens steadfast of mood 
Ranks of the ruddy are strewn ; 

So in this white mist rayed with the gold 
Rugs lie unrolled 
More gorgeous than aught in the town. 

Under the gray sky out by the creek 
Yellow are grasses and brown ; 

Glassed in a high-tide's silvery streak 
Tall reeds ruddy have grown ; 

So by the waters gray gold and green 
Pictures are seen 
More glorious than any in town. 



ETERNAL SUMMER. 

GOLD of autumn, fairy gold, 
Painting with a separate grace 
Every tree within its place, 

Are you fickle as they scold ? 

Gold of autumn fadeth fast ; 

Falls and falls each lingering leaf 
Slanting playful towards the sheaf 

Round about the treetrunk cast. 

But the treetrunk moulders too ; 

All the wood an ocean fills ; 

Little rivers gnaw the hills ; — 
Why should mortals rail at you ? 

You are stronger than the sea ; 
You are longer-lived than hills, 
Since your passing beauty thrills 

Souls that haunt eternity. 



AUTUMNAL OVERTHROW. 

Farewell, bright leaves, and softly He 
In graves below all stormy weather ; 
I may not join your fall together 

With thoughts forlorn, when lo, I spy 

Spread out the gleam and glories mellow 
Of rich brown woods, of lilac shades, 
The purplish hues that fill the glades, 
Each delicate shifting tint that fades 

Through all the scale twixt black and yellow. 

Bright leaves, till you fell who could mark 
The magic traceries in the thickets ? 
A thousand sounds, the shrill of crickets, 

The whippoorwill's lost cry, the stark 

Black forest shadows, were so valid 
They neutralized each sunborn hue. 
But since from angry steely blue 
The snow on freezing winglets flew — 

There lies your background strong and pallid. 



44 Autumnal Overthrow. 

Cold sickness, thou with writhen face, 
That earnest as from clear air thunder, 
No heart for thee have I, no wonder, 

No welcome smile, no word of grace ! 

And yet, as underneath the trees, 
Before their beauty stood conceded 
A shroud of bitter white was needed — 
Where would our race be now, unweeded 

By grisly death and wan disease ? 



IN AUTUMN. 

RED-GOLDEN grass of flames that slowly parch, 

Deep umber reeds that burn beside the creek, 

O tulip tree, of maiden outline meek, 

That yellows clear against the fringe of larch ! 

Ye purple spaces of the evening bay, 

All, all ye shell-rose reaches near the black 

Where sleeps the mainland, unseen for the wrack 

Of that huge sun which all too soon is gray — 

Speak ! for such glories why not worship you ? 

Speak ! to yourselves is no prostration due ? 



What ! when the moonlight powdereth silver grays 
On leaves of maple, ages vast have steeped 
In breathless gorgeous sunsets like to-day's — 
Whence their thin dyes, fast falling, century heaped, 
Have stained small palms uplifted in surprise 
At godlike colors — when the moonlight sifts 
Silver between the ruddy gold of rifts 



46 * In Autumn. 

In that most royal tree, 

I must not bow the knee ! 
Must I dam up the pourings of my heart 

For an High God, apart? — 
Lo, here I lie and worship ye, wide skies, 
For each warm hue that meets these kindling eyes ! 



SAWS. 

WORST of crimes are not of woman : 
Horrors halve by being human. 

He who sinneth in the city, 
May find margin to be witty ; 

He who in the woods doth sin, 
Him the drear fiend enters in. 



AT SANDY HOOK. 

ALONG the borders of this sterile land 

Each wild-beast breaker leaps upon the strand 

With such deep mouth that all in fear we stand, 

And watch at eve the giant rollers shrink 
Before still mightier on the ocean's brink, 
And wait by night to feel the whole beach sink 

In one wide crash. At foot full many a shell 
Lies deeply hid, and who is he can tell 
What marvels may lurk there for him who searcheth 
well? 

On yon blue sphere, from spicy islands blown, 
What craft shall tooth the rim, spike the unsown 
The fruitful field with spars in some strange forest 
grown ? 



At Sandy Hook. 49 

So hand in hand and silent on we stray, 

Nor what is waiting in the farther bay, 

What the next creek will bring us, who shall say? 

For something cometh. That is wherefore, banned 
To salt-soaked beach, with parted lips we stand 
And seaward bend our eyes or stare upon the sand. 

Each wave is new that mounteth high the shore ; 
Each cape hath treasures ; through the midnight roar, 
Hark, surely something comes not seen, not heard 
before ! 



I. THE WINTER ELF. 

DANCE along the new-blown drift, 

Broke the weary chain of things, 
Regions wild with hourly shift 

Crag that ne'er a like shade flings! 
Whirl across the blackened pond, 

Mock the cranberries through the ice, 
Cheeks of me as red and round 

But snow heart and form of ice ; 
Crystal quails are likest me 
Pulsing through the Arctic Sea. 

Shot below the snow-bent pines — 

Holaho, the windy hill ! 
Down the glorious mad inclines 

Plunging with the tongueless rill ! 
Tease the white owl while he broods 

Hid within the netted brake 
Where, in feathery lace for roods 

Purple lies the solid lake ! 



The Winter Elf. 51 

Pluck the brittle flower-whorls 

Peeping brown through frosty snow — 
Crack from steeps the icy curls, 

Plash them in the brine below ! 
Sail my ships on crisping seas, 

Hear their white sides clash and groan, 
Chase the fog's weird imageries, 

Jeer the north wind's lordly tone ! 
This is life, this is joyance, 

This pleasure without fault ; 
Surely thought is but annoyance — 

Only one thing gives me halt : 
There's the moon — ! 

Some day this shall be my thought 
By what will all things are wrought, 
If for that bright ball I slave 
Stealing from the eastern wave 
Spying out each frosty flake 
In wood and valley, sea and lake ? 

Sun has weak uncertain light : 
Moon is mighty, strange and bright, 
And, though waning waxes fast, 



52 The Whiter Elf. 

Moves the root of boundless sea, 
Stirring that, does moon rule me 
First or last ? 
Is this nature mine 
Devil's or divine ? 

Look, the silly press of mortals, 
Toilsome, anxious, blind and tame, 
Birth and death a painful name ! 

Mine is not to pass the portals, 
Memory finds me still the same. 
Sometimes in the blinding sleet 
Swift before a man I fleet 
(Heartflake white, a rosy face, 
But of body not a trace) 
Thinks he dreams ; but should I stay 
I'm his own god from that day! 

God or devil ? — Things should bevel, 
What is good and what is evil ? 

Curious human face that striveth 
Grim-set in a bitter death ! 

When the raving west wind driveth 
Tons of snow on laden breath, 



The Winter Elf. 53 

Then upon the prairie group 
Lightly from the blast I stoop, 
Close the ugly staring eyes, 
Smooth the savage glare, arise 

Neither sad, 

No, nor glad ; 
Only wonder as I hurry 
On the broad back of the skurry 
Why men hold relentless strife 
For the bubble called a life. 



II. SPRING ASKS. 

Ye knotty roots that roof my bed, 
That frame the valley, arch the pond 
And silver woodslope where, beyond, 

Sits a bird on a sumac-head — 

You bird on a sun-drugged sumac-head, 
Blue of the back, brown of the breast, 
Who placed you — best ? 

Was not I last night the child, 

Changeless, mad as leaves that blow 
Playmates mine o'er frosty snow ? 

Well may south winds blow me mild 
But not change : 

Here I wake 'mid flattened leaves 

Languid under twisted eaves ; 

Slim like mortals, shot with strange 

Emerald my transparent frame, 
Thin my cheeks and weak my knees — 
Hark, the violet-smoky trees 
Speak my name ! 



Spring Asks. 55 

" Up, up, by our hands 

Catch us, savior of the earth, 
Tree and herb at thy commands 

Leap with music into birth, 
Spring, Spring, young god Spring — " 



Ungainsaid the voices ring, 
Every cell o'er night is broken, 
All things loss and gain betoken : 
Snow from twig and cloud from sky ! 
Where the ice was broad I spy 
Dead gold wavelets ; tuneful trees, 
Trees majestic march at ease 
Down the slope to where I lie — 
Hazy masses, dark on dark, 
Thick, more thick with budding bark 
Till 'mid young brush sweet of smell 

Past the tell, 
Flinty edged against the white 
Of the snow-banks over night, 
Now the shape of gnarring crows 
Blurry on the woodside grows. 



56 Spring Asks. 

Work ! the stirring branches sing, 
Nor may be denied the chant 
Organ-toned from every plant. 
Question comes not, but on wing 
Of the languor-laden air 
Propped, I slide the willow's hair 
To the root of fingers lean, 
Lo, where'er my touch hath been 
Drifts a rain all golden green ! 
Russet fall the red-oak sheaves, 
Maiden beeches drop their leaves — 
Tatters thin they chastely drew 
Round about when bold winds blew — 
And the woods of all the lands 
Lift their myriad clenched hands, 
Quake — and these from brown gray bands 
Struggle free. 



Bird on a storm-beat sumac-head, 
Blue o' the back, brown o the breast, 

I wrought you best ! 
Or had you otherwise won the red 

Of the sumac-head, 



Spring Asks. 57 

Sweet bird that ever doth blithely wait 

For something to come, though it cometh late ? 

No, you ne'er could hope to guess, 

You, nor Sun, though Sun may bless, 

Nor the dreadful Moon of night, 

Cold and strangely great of might ; 

Yes- 
God I am ; the tangled swamps 
Gain from me a thousand new 
Wonder-brilliant forms. The lamps 
Borne by myriad wings, the blue 
Tender-veined liverwort, 
Windflower meek, and coil of fern, 
Crocus-flames that have no burn, 
These to waken is my sport ; 
Each of these and all in turn, 
Whose deep sleep is danger-fraught, 
By my craft to life are brought. 
Mottled beak of marshy weed, 
Gasping for the air, I feed ; 
And when great moths, brown and eyed, 
Ope their doors, I stand beside ; 
So from slimy mold I break 
Each weak piper by the lake. 



58 Spring Asks. 

All things alter, burgeon, rise ; 

All things veer 'neath changing skies : 

Change hath touched me. Who shall say 

Changes come not every day? 

I am god, let all things chime. 

I am space and I am time. 

Only this is past my lore — 

What the bird is waiting for ? 



III. SUMMER ANSWERS. 

LOVE, love — yes, love ! 
All up the wood the faint aromas creep, 

Sonorous bells are pealing from the lake, 
And wide-eyed night is drinking, breathless deep, 

A marsh-born chorus, glorious for the sake 
Of some great joy ! But we are couched on mould 

Where webs of steep trees etch a mellow moon ; 

From rhythmic water pulsing to a tune 
Our low lids catch a shifting foil-of-gold : 

For you are found, the riddle, known not of, 

But longed for long — my sun-moon-stars of love. 

Mine, mine, ay mine ! 
At break of day two mortals seen by me, 

Their parting sighs, each warm and clinging breast, 
Their reeling eyes that begged yet could not see, 

My smooth joy brake in floes of wild unrest, 



60 Summer Answers. 

Until you came with blue-birds ! — whether deep 
In waves you slept, or far in tropic land 
You waked to life on some warm, oozy strand, 

Or from my frame were slow shaped in a sleep, 
Or great god Sun, henceforward yours and mine, 
Did lend me you for life's completest sign. 

< 
Ah, rare day — rare ! 

A hill-close, warm, and brimmed with smell of spring, 
Laid thick w T ith petals apple-orchard strewn 

Your feet that day were kissing. Every wing 
That wafts a bird-voice to your path had flown. 

I too, till then by my caprices led, 

So arrowy whirred, swift as a hive-shot bee, 
That close-enlaced, you learnt all things thro' me 

Before once turned my way that golden head, 
When, hid by dazzle of your sunshine hairs, 
We kissed, to blush and love all unawares. 

Peace, peace, yea, peace. 
The wizard moon shall never chill that breast 

Too rare in charms for mortal maid to own. 
These lips shall soothe your broad eyes to a rest 

Neath snowy lids by shadows forest-thrown ; 



Summer Answers. 61 

Your tawny frame with languor dewy-sweet 

Pervades my veins, while, folded light and warm, 
Slim limbs of gold-dust with my opal form 

In full-blown flowers of spotless passion meet : 
O woods were waiting, nor has thick life ceased 
Its pulsing since, in grass, in bird, in beast. 

Yea, life, life, life ! 
At my first change the glad earth rustled green ; 

At thy first coming sharper grew the shades, 
But now close-linked, the tasseled maize between, 

We guide the hurrying sap, we part the blades 
Where thin ears peep ; we fill the buckwheat head, 

And as we pass the peach turns golden-brown ; 

Great roses blow ; the blackberry its crown 
Sinks heavily while deeper grows its red. 

O ! love is work ; our life-work, love ; we strive 

In love for new life, and our aims arrive ! 

High, fair those aims ! 
The Sun is god. Tis he our being's root 

Blows roundly out to life's perfected sphere. 
The glorious sun is mimicked in each fruit, 

But moons are childless, icy-calm, and clear. 



62 Summer Answers. 

When noon gleams hot, and while the rich sap yearns 
Along our veins, we'll broaden our delight 
With help for all that lives, be guard by night 

To all fair things within whose fibre burns 

The central sun. His great will thus he frames 
In two glad slaves, two close-entwined flames. 









IV. AUTUMN AND FALL. 

THIS shall guard you 'gainst the moon, 
This, that oft has sheltered you, 

Help-mate true ! 
See, this arm, that once went round 
You, a slender maiden found 

In a June. 
Close-linkt then the fields we paced : 
Now it may not span your waist. 

Let the moon with bitter stare 
Walk in haughty state the sky, 

Seem to dry 
Sap in tree and juice in grape, 
Seem our mighty sun to drape 

With thick air ; — 
Still the west winds smoothly blow ; 
Mighty rivers calmly flow. 
What if night's breath now be cool, 



64 Autumn and Fall. 

What, if swallows disappear? 

Do not fear, 
Your dear cheeks are full as red 
As the ripe leaf overhead ! 

By the pool 
Lean the red trees strong of heart, 
They from life will ne'er depart ! 

We have done our office well. 
Help we gave before we saw 

All the law ; 
Saw, nor we, nor sun were gods, 
That the kindly season plods 

Past our spell ; 
Yet that earth with joy advances 
To our sympathetic dances. 

Much we fathomed in our toiling, 
Catching many a secret weird 

By the beard 
Till its face read plainly. Often 
Harsh things which a touch would soften 

Paid for moiling. 
Soon we'll have return for duty 
In a child with all your beauty. 



Autumn and Fall. 65 

Eyes that yearn with deepest sadness, 
Dark as gold-cored gentian, 

Why so wan ? 
Dreamful days portend no sorrow; 
From this silent haze we borrow 

Richer gladness ; 
Hot life grasps the rest it earns, 
Quivering, to a still flame burns. 



When before the giant cold 
Through the gateways of the wood 

Runs a shaking; 
And red-golden scales are falling 
Past the brown and staring limbs ; 
When the wet leaf prints its mark 

On the mud ; 
When the trees' black skeletons 

Push in view — 

It is death. 

This is death : 
All the leaves, red with health, 
All are fallen : 
So the woman 



66 Autumn and Fall. 

Once by me loved, now, and always, 

So she passes 
From these fields, these mighty forests ; 

Yet where she goes 

There go I. 

Here upon the ground she lies. 

By her side 
Stands an infant icy-cold, 
Without heart or brain to know 
Whence he comes, who I am — 
I, whose minutes all are numbered, 

He, my child ! 

For each leaf, 
Falling, falling, left behind 

Each a bud : 

So shall we — 
She who has but gone before, 
I who now am hasting after — 

Live again in him. 

What he is 

Once was I. 
Far prophetic vistas open 
To my fading eyes. I reckon 



Autumn and Fall. 67 

All the days that were and shall be. 

He shall never know his parents, 

He will sport as once I sported 

Through the snowbrush, o'er the mountain, 

Careless, free as thistle-down. 

Yonder glassy lake that whitens 

There, by white sky and by mirror' d 

Olive ranks of trees divided 

Into semblance of an icecoat, 

Only feigns ! — 
I shall never see the real sheet 
Clear and moveless, yet protecting 
Lake and lakefolk from the north winds. 
It will be my bold one's play-ground, 
There the first doubt shall assail him 
Earlier than assail'd his father — 

Quicker growth 
Shall reward his parents' toil. 

Deeper wisdom 

Was engendered 

With his forming ! 

We have learned : 
Not in vain is any labor 
Which for good has "been performed. 



LONGINGS. 

A SNAKE with wings, ah would that I might be! 

A coil of curves that, never twice the same, 
Still shifts its beauteous links in harmony 

To myriad wreathings of a lissome frame — 
A broad-wing'd snake whose vans, when eve is nigh, 
May stay the sun by towering up the sky. 

What earthly joys to press my yielding form 
To Mother Earth by every hill and hollow! 

To flow at noon across the grasses warm, 
And learn the pulses of her heart to follow ! 

To wind far down the lily-flaked lagoon 

And lick cool dews that start beneath the moon ! 

What joys of air to slide luxurious neck 
O'er smoothest tops of close-enwoven trees ! 

To touch and taste the sky-swung flowers that deck 
Their loftiest twigs, kno\vn to the dizzy bees! 



Longings. 69 

To ride the waves of russet and of green, 

And glide by paths where never man hath been ! 

So no base thing should hide below my ken 
And no high bird should soar above my sight, 

Wild beasts should make me welcome to their den, 
And eagles, that in circles vast delight, 

Should wheel with pinions lightly fanning mine 

And watch men creep like ants on leaf of vine. 



FATE. 

Niagara, September, 1879. 

THINK you the whirlpool vies under the hard blue skies 
Foaming, tumultuous, with her surrounding steeps? 

She, with her mere-green smile deeper than human 
guile 
Sleeps. She sleeps, sleeps. 

Think you the Dragon lies under his purple skies 
Crouched to rush upward from his rock-walled deeps? 

Wound in a conscious coil, he of the fated spoil 
Sleeps. He sleeps, sleeps. 



POEMS IN TOWN. 



DAWN IN THE CITY. 

The city slowly wakes : 

Her every chimney makes 
Offering of smoke against the cool white skies. 

Slowly the morning shakes 

The lingering shadowy flakes 
Of night from doors and windows, from the city's eyes. 

A breath through heaven goes : 

Leaves of the pale sweet rose 
Are strewn along the clouds of upper air. 

Healer of ancient woes, 

The palm of dawn bestows 
Peace on the feverish brow, comfort on grim despair. 

Now the celestial fire 

Fingers the sunken spire, 
Crocket by crocket swiftly creepeth down ; 

Brushes the maze of wire, 

Dewy, electric lyre, 
And with a silent hymn one moment fills the town. 
4 



74 Dawn in the City. 

A sound of pattering hoofs 

Above the emergent roofs 
And anxious bleatings tell the passing herd ; 

Scared by the piteous droves, 

A shoal of skurrying doves 
Veering, around the island of the church has whirred. 

Soon through the smoky haze 

The park begins to raise 
Its outlines clearer into daylit prose ; 

Ever with fresh amaze 

The sleepless fountains praise 
Morn that has gilt the city as it gilds the rose. 

High in the clearer air 

The smoke now builds a stair 
Leading to realms no wing of bird has found ; 

Things are more foul, more fair ; 

A distant clock somewhere 
Strikes, and the dreamer starts at clear reverberant 
sound. 

Farther the tide of dark 

Drains from each square and park : 



Dawn in the City. 75 

Here is a city fresh and new-create, 

Wondrous as though the ark 
Should once again disbark 

On a remoulded world its safe and joyous freight. 

Ebbs all the dark, and now 

Life eddies to and fro 
By pier and alley, street and avenue : 

The myriads stir below, 

As hives of coral grow — 
Vaulted above, like them, with a fresh sea of blue. 



NEW YORK, JULY, 1863. 

(In the University Tower.) 

Is it the wind, the many-tongued, the weird 

That cries in sharp distress about the eaves? 
Is it the wind whose gathering shout is heard 

With voice of peoples myriad like the leaves ? 
Is it the wind ? Fly to the casement, quick, 
And when the roar comes thick 

Fling wide the sash, 
Await the crash ! 

Nothing. Some various solitary cries, 

Some sauntering woman's short hard laugh, 
Or honester, a dog's bark — these arise 

From lamplit street up to this free flagstaff. 
Nothing remains of that low threatening sound ; 
The wind raves not the eaves around. . . 
Clasp casement to, 
You heard not true. 



New York, July, 1863. 77 

Hark there again ! a roar that holds a shriek ! 
But not without, no, from below it comes : 
What pulses up from solid earth to wreak 

A vengeful word on towers and lofty domes? 
What angry booming doth the trembling ear, 
Glued to the stone wall, hear — 
So deep, no air 
Its weight can bear? 

Grieve ! 'Tis the voice of ignorance and vice, 
The rage of slaves who fancy they are free, 
Men who would keep men slaves at any price, 

Too blind their own black manacles to see. 
Grieve ! 'Tis that grisly spectre with a torch, 
Riot — that bloodies every porch, 
Hurls justice down 
And burns the town. 



THE WITNESSES. 

PAST midnight, thro' the city hushed and chill, 
Undreamed-of lodgers in the human mill 
Seen but as filmy whiteness 'gainst the skies 
Up from the crannies of the pavement rise ; 

Rise from the lairs where all day long a tread 
Of passers-by is echoing overhead 
Whispering more truthfully what goals they seek 
Than if with tongues the various feet could speak. 

Damp and concealed in crevice and in nook 
These presences, thin as the leaf of book 
And spread far out like flaky growth of caves 
Or wild-fire fungus on the walls of graves 

Are sensitive as chemics to the sun. 
Through their fine nerves unlying tremors run, 
Though blind and voiceless, still and seeming dead 
They hear what never yet in words was said 



The Witnesses. 79 

Of joy and agony man's soul within, 

Of bridal yearnings and of graybeard sin ; 

The lover's hatred of his love ; the growth 

In hapless minds of thoughts they fear and loathe ; 

Anger past words which comes one knows not why ; 
Satiety before the cup is nigh ; 
Vague rapture that of conscience is the prize 
And bliss too keen for coarser speech than sighs. 

That nimble step tells one who works for need ; 
Yon groping tread, a man whose vice is greed ; 
The gait that minces, overcharged with pride, 
Is one ; another, the vain-glorious stride. 

The gambler's emptiness, the generous spirit 
Of him who grants his neighbors all they merit; 
Trembling of drunkards, the unstable mind 
Of thieves still listening for a cry behind, 

The anguish in the murderess of her child, 
The shame, alas, of her whom love beguiled, 
A thousand secrets, whether good or ill, 
Into those ears below the pavement steal. 



80 The Witnesses. 

So, ever speechlessly, when midnight stamps 
Her shadowy heel upon the colored lamps 
And the town-shine is caught against the clouds 
In bands of pallor like gigantic shrouds, 

When o'er the lights that join lines down the street 
Wheels of strange rosiness the eyesight cheat, 
And in the gloom below the beetling eaves 
A redness suddenly the darkness cleaves, 

The spectres rise ! Unholy is their skill. 
They crowd the square, yet scarce a key-hole fill ; 
Dancing a ghoul-dance o'er the silent town 
They sweep on those whom fitful slumbers drown. 



A BETROTHAL. 

BEAUTY needs gold. But what is there beside 
In this betrothal where all friends deride? 

Surely for this the parents are to blame 

Since, fond or careless, they indulged their child 
Till she at thought of lacking aught grows wild 

And in the race for riches knows not shame. 

And who shall say that sordid hope of gains 
Inflamed not those who brought her into life 

And at the breast the milk had secret stains 
Of pride and avarice, of ambitious strife ? 

For look at her. This is no vulgar form 
For clasping of a booby. Are those veins 

Channels for no great waves of passionate storm 
When empire love o'er the rapt subject reigns? 



82 A Betrothal. 

Ah dainty feet, and dainty hard white hands, 

Hands sculptured fair to toy with curls and flowers, 

Small feet to stroll beside one into lands 

Where haste comes not, where envy never lowers. . . 

Ye generous gifts of beauty travestied, 

Transcendent colors of young cheeks and hair 
Disfigured by that sharp look seen where'er 

The wrangling brokers vie in money-greed. . . ! 

Hard-outlined form and clean-cut empty face, 
Your joy's a business ; all alert, ambitious, 
You're good because there's no time to be vicious ;— 

The world's coin current must be commonplace ! 

So there she sits, alas the too apt scholar — 
Merely the profile on a golden dollar! 



TO A DANCE MEASURE. 

Maiden with farsearching gaze, 
As you waltz, as you drift through the maze 
Why blush that you love the deep motion, 
Why speak of the dance in dispraise ? 

Winds always dance with the cloud 
Nor are sea currents ever too proud 

To whirl with the ships on the ocean 
With a lightness to liquids allowed. 

Earth never stops her advance 
Nor about her own axis to dance, 

While circling each House of the Planets 
Not a slip does she make or mischance. 

Planets encircle the sun 
But the sun and the stars every one 
Revolve on those pivotal granites 
That were central when earth was begun. 



84 To a Dance Measure. 

These again subtly may plod 

With their feet by the infinite shod, — 

Yet all be a speck ever drifting 
Through the veins of ineffable God ! 

Maiden with hair like the night 
And a hue of the north-polar light, 

Who knows with what gay worlds and shifting 
Yonder vein on your temple is bright ? 

Skies if you infinite call 

Then within is the infinite small ; 

Here stand we between, v/hile the ocean 
Of ignorance covers us all. 

Time exists not, nor of space, 

Nor of greatness or smallness a trace ; 

For nothing is sure here but motion — - 
And the love that looks forth from your face. 

Dance and delight and adore, 

For the present what queen can do more? 

Swing free on the tide of emotion — 
'Tis a breath — and your barque is ashore ! 



SPRING IN THE CITY. 

The streets are thick with human life 
And men move slowly, now that spring 

Has cut apart with golden knife 
The fetters binding bud and wing ; 

Pale folk their stifling garret shun 

And walk like languid flies in the sun. 

The chambers of the sick are filled 

With cooler air. They hear the sound 

Of men and wagons, long time stilled, 
Once rrfbre through lifted sash resound ; 

In sunny vines by dry churchwall 

The amorous sparrows chirp and brawl. 

And workalassies drop their shawls 
To loiter homeward in the light ; 

While bending cobblers hate their awls 
And ragged boys forbear to fight, 



86 Spring in the City. 

Grown girls the season holds in sway 
And lads their longings cannot stay. 



For some unwonted inner heat 

Bears down on their young bosoms so, 

They must be out and try the sweet 
Dull laming languor to o'erthrow. 

The old ones sigh and smile and sigh 

To think of spring in years gone by. 

The river looks to men less chill 
And tarry boatmen lay their ways ; 

With tow the gaping seams they fill 
And soon with gars the water graze ; 

Now dockrats plunge them in the tide 

And icebound fleets to market glide. 

And reeking stokers quit their coals 

To snatch the breath of moistened fields, 

While turfmen lounge with talk of foals 
And what in horse the season yields ; 

A landlord gives a kind good day 

Though tenants are too poor to pay. 



Spring in the City. 87 

The street-girl smoothes her lazy arms ; 

Forgets her dream of turfy grave 
In hope that spring will aid her charms ; 

While drunkards think they will be brave, 
Softly his lash the teamster wields 
And gamblers envy John his fields. 

And all are moved in various ways 
Save one alone who trips the street, 

A woman full of devious grace, 
Of ready words and glances fleet; 

Her light robes might the spring beguile ; 

She hides a pale face with her smile. 

Yet she has wrung her husband's soul, 
Her children's happiness she slew ; 

Her lover's hope in life she stole, 
Nor even to herself was true. 

Her heart, if cut, like gray puff-ball 

Into a fine black dust would fall. 



GOATS. 

Cruel and yellow of eye, 

Coarse-haired, shaggy of side, 
With a humorous low philosophy 

Does a goat this world deride. 

Greedy, wicked and mean 

He butts when his mate would share 
And munches his stalks with a leering grin 

At his neighbor's famished air. 

Sneering, lustful and cold, 

None's viler under the sun ; 
Yet he might be the sweetest lamb in the fold 

To judge from his skeleton. 



FRIENDSHIP. 

Ah, is it not a bitter time, ay, is it not a mournful 

day 
When, meeting of a trusted friend, his old eyes turn 

away? 

What have you done ? Alas, who knows ! In kins- 
men's eyes you have not proved 

By gifts your friendship ; kindliness has not been 
paid for as behooved. 

Perhaps his wife too often speaks in praise your 

name ; perhaps again 
With too much dark suspect of thought her utter 

silence racks his brain. 

Or else she has a tongue to hint that friendship has 

its limits here 
And house and home and wife and child than just a 

friend should be more dear. 



go Friendship. 

Perhaps — perhaps . . . You vainly stride through 

dark surmises without end 
And at the last it merely comes to this : That you 

have lost a friend. 



SOME PEOPLE HAVE LUCK. 

Side by side upon the deck 

Lounging, she and I : 
Little did the other reck 

What should hap thereby. 
Strangers ! Which perceived the other ? 

'Twas nor she nor I ; 
'Twas the evening's fostering mother 

Lamping in the sky. 

Listless both the shimmering river 

Watched with dreaming eye, 
Watched the spectral vessel shiver 

Gold that poured from high, 
Throwing shades fantastic, black 

As across they fly, 
Stamping on the yellow track 

Forms of sharpest dye. 



92 Some People have Luck. 

Softly, soft our shoulders moved, 

('Twas nor she nor I,) 
And a languor strange behooved 

That (she wist not why) 
Little weary head adrooping, 

Worn with lessons dry, 
Now upon my shoulder stooping 

Fell with childish sigh. 



Calmly in the moonlight sleeping 

She nor stirred ; and I 
Scarcely dared a breath while keeping 

Watch for waking sigh. 
When it came and head flew back 

All that she could spy 
Was a sleeping youth — a track 

Of gold — the bay, the sky ! 



She, an earnest artist-maid ; 

Broker's clerk was I. 
The shoulder where her cheek was laid 

Grew so bold and spry, 



Some People have Luck. 93 

It has forced enough concession 

From the world a shy- 
Modest house, a wee possession 

With hard gold to buy. 

Now, when night the bay is steeping 

In its sable dye, 
Here's a little head asleeping 

That same shoulder nigh. 
Busy brains now plan for me, 

Hands for poor me ply: 
O saffron wake across the sea, 

Who's so rich as I ? 



HOUSEKEEPING. 

DECK your house from inward out. 

Let there be an inmost shrine 
Where to praise with gifts devout 

Love both human and divine. 

After that, the holiest room 

Heap with choicest things that grow; 

Spare not gold or silver show, 
Ambergris, nor forest bloom, 

Man's wrought marvels daintiest, 
Colored canvas, chiseled stones, 

Comforts few, but all that's best, 
Each that special beauty owns. 

Then as worldly station calls 
All your home in order set, 
Nor through hasty pride forget 

Chambers still outrank the halls. 



Housekeeping. 95 

After, if you more can spend, 

Neatly decorate the shell ; 
Next your crumbling fences mend, 

Lay your road-beds deep and well — 

But beware, lest these beguile 

Care on outward things to waste : 
Save in chambers fair and chaste, 

Where docs fortune really smile? 



THE WEEK. 

PUT Sunday aside for your prayers and your think- 
ing ; 

Monday for reading and writing and dreaming; 
On Tuesday be battling, be sweating and swinking ; 

On Wednesday be acting, be busy and scheming ; 
And feast ye on Thursday with eating and drinking. 
On Friday be sure that you cuddle your wife ; 
And sadly on Saturday muster your life. 
Who the rules seven severely applies 
He shall be good, healthy, wealthy and wise. 



ON A FIREFLY SEEN IN TOWN. 

Wand'rer through night, 
That o'er the town urgest thy random flight, 
A lamp displaying, • 

In vain assaying 
To lure a single comrade towards its cheery light- 
Here be no friends at play ; 
No bird of prey 
Marking the gleam will swerve aside in fright. 

What brings thee here 
Where all is dust and brick ? where buildings rear 

Their summits dreary 

Like shoulders weary 
Of basalt giants in a crater's frozen mere ? 

Where the streets ooze with death 

And every breath 
Is perilous from a feverish atmosphere? 
5 



98 On a Firefly seen in Town. 

Why onward speed ? 
Far lie the whispering meadows ; in the reed 

Sparkle thy joyous brothers 

Till daylight smothers 
Their dance, their garish tapers 'neath the danksome 
weed — 

Galley, whose sails ne'er droop, 

From off whose poop 
Signals are flashii^g which no comrades heed ! 

Or hast thou mind 
To scorn their joys, and, spreading all unkind 

Thy pinions slender, 

Dost hope to render 
Thyself more wise than they, and thine own eyes less 
blind ? 

Haste thee, return, untried 

Leave all beside 
And thoughtless foot once more the evening wind ! 

Perhaps, a sage 
Thou far'st abroad in fierce and cynic rage 
Thy lantern blowing, 
Too surely knowing 



On a Firefly seen in Town. 99 

No honest man may live and walk this lying stage. 

Halt ! the town bricks are hot 

And no green spot 
Exists that can thy fiery heart assuage. 



For who shall say 
Thou hast no errand ? that no thoughtful way 

Thou here pursuest, 

And what thou doest 
To-day is not well done as it was yesterday? 

Thou hast a heart so stout 

I fairly doubt 
Thou dost the work to-night — and I the play. 



Where didst thou gain 
That flambeau lighting up the aerial main ? 

Was it in runnels 

Of earth, in tunnels 
Deep underneath the ground that, tricksy miner, fain 

To suck volcano juice 

Thou could'st produce 
Sulphury quintessence without smoke or stain ? 



ioo On a Firefly seen in Town. 

Seen, then unseen — 
Thou art a wizard with the night for screen ; 

Or, from a pyre 

A drifting fire 
That in the fitful blast grows ruddy red of sheen ; 

Or, a mere bubble of gas 

Burning doth pass — 
And darkness hath forgot that light hath been. 



Where woods are dank 
Thou spiritual incandescence from a bank 

Of weeds miasmal, 

Thou gleam phantasmal 
Art proof of hidden good that lurks in all things rank ; 

Insect, or streak of fire, 

Thou dost aspire 
To live on high a life not always blank. 



Perchance thy track 
Is seen by Someone's eye. Do light and black 
In varying sizes 
Reveal surprises 



On a Firefly seen in Town. 101 

Of secret telegraphy ? — not for us, alack ! 

Dost thou with night and fire 

Write thy desire 
One instant on the shadowy chimney-stack? 



Nay, nay — no fly 
But sparks thou art from wheels no man can spy. 

The fays are stirring ! 

On crystals whirring 
They meet, and when they clash, long flashes greet the 
eye . . . 

Yet the light shines too smooth, 

Thy gleamings soothe 
Like slumbrous stars that dream within the sky. 

Why then — of life 
The Lord hath touched within yon home a wife, 

And that quick flashing 

Is but the dashing 
His torch makes as he lights a human soul to strife. 

May the flame clearly burn 

Until its turn 
Cometh to fall by death's druidic knife ! 



102 On a Firefly seen in Town. 

A taper, thou, 
Held by that hand to which all mortals bow ! 

Thine innocent gleaming, 

Is only seeming — 
Thou com'st to summon silence to a tortured brow. 

Resting some roof upon 

The thread long spun 
Is snapped, and life is over ! who knows how ? 

Alas, this age 
Lets nothing extant be on Nature's page 

Save when through fences 

Of our seven senses 
They pass to where king reason struts his crumbly 
stage. 

Thou if not angel art 

Perchance a part 
Of fiery ethers round the pole that rage : 

A little coal 
From wintry conflagrations o'er the Pole — 
From flaming mountains 
Of snow — from fountains 



On a Firefly seen in Town. 103 

Of fire essential, just one spark that downward stole ! 

So, wand'ring from that sphere, 

Thou dost appear 
Alive to those who languish toward a goal. 



Or from the sea 
Wast thou in midmost of a storm cast free ? 

Hath Luna's crescent 

Drawn phosphorescent 
And life-like spray on high and lent it wings to flee ? 

Art thou of amber made 

Or wave-tossed jade? 
What is thy meaning, brilliant mystery ? 



Ah, now I know. 
Thou art the soul of one, whose heart was so 

Unmoved, disdainful 

That from the painful 
Mishaps of man arose no ruth, no kindly glow. 

Here thou didst squander years 

And here thy tears — 
If thou could'st weep — would testify thy woe. 



104 On a Firefly seen in Town. 

It is too late : 
To thine own choice of life thou'rt dedicate. 

Harsh was thy laughter 

And mock : — ' Hereafter? 
Who knows thereof? Drink deep, feed high, but 
cease to prate ! ' 

Now, a poor wind-blown fly 

That knows not why 
Thou hast that earth which seemed the loftiest state. 

So, thou art come 
Blindly revisiting thy human home ; 

Thy heart, once ashes, 

Now vainly flashes 
With ghostly heat that warms not, though it stars the 
gloom . . . 

Yet — God thee bless, sweet fly, 

It may be, I 
Defame in thee the fair night's loveliest bloom. 



OF A POET IN TOWN. 

You ask me why, O lady gemmed and fine, 

The mystic singer proved beneath the gas 

No thrush of the woods, no lark that loves the 
grass, 
But mocking man like all the dreary line. 
You asked me why, and I have found, alas 

The reason true. The poet is all strings 
Of coarse and cobweb, where all winds that pass 

Ring out what notes they bear upon their wings 
And count the noise the poet's. But he knows 

They're vanishers by their own voice condemned, 
And, wise in thrushes, likes your rustling gown. 

Wherefore it comes, O lady fine and gemmed, 
He pulls what brilliant scentless flowers the town 

May nourish ; you, what in the shy wood blows. 
5* 



TWO MAIDENS. 

(For the Two Sides of a Fan.) 

Where the jets of sunlight pour 

Through the damp shades on the brook 
Who is this that scarce has shook 

Morning from her pinions four ? 
Dewy joyous diamonds glitter 
On the blue wings of this flitter 

In and out where violets sag. 
When the flickering body settles 

See what flash of precious metals 
Sits and quits the swaying flag ! 

Hers are wings cut odd for pleasure, 
Curved for sporting, not for toil, 
'Twixt them in a dainty coil 

Runs the purple gold-green treasure 
Fashioned for a life capricious, 
Blind to all things virtuous vicious 



Two Maidens. 107 

Only skipping what offends. 

She is called by men the Maiden 

Fashioned, more than flower she's swayed on, 
For luxurious wanton ends. 

Curtained in an alcove dim 

Half in white light, half in umber, 
Now in motion, now aslumber, 

Purple-bodiced for a whim, 

Who is this with lines that beckon 
Looks whereon no man can reckon, 

Frowns for lovers, leers for friends ? 
She is called by men a maiden 
Fashioned like the couch she's laid on 

For luxurious wanton ends. 



SONG FROM "SINGLE-SCULLS." 

Boatman's Song. 

Why is the oarsman gay ? 

No pleasures pall 
On joyous hearts that stir the piny wings ; 

Where seamews only play 

His shallop skims away, 
Away o'er deep and shoal like leaves in fall ; 

Blithely his red blood swings 
Along his veins and burns them clear of gall. 

Boatmen shall envy whom ? 

Not the poor wight 
Who checks a steed and follows his caprices — 

A pampered charger's groom 

Whose soul has not the room 
To hold the oarsman's hot and ceaseless fight ! 

His puny frame he pieces 
With legs of brutes, and braves in alien might. 



Song from ' ' Single-Sculls. " 1 09 

Boatmen demand no aids 

From sail or beast or steam, 
But cut the wave in their brown strength rejoicing. 

Should bayonets grow from spades 

They'll change for swords their blades 
And cut with might the ruddy battle-stream. 

Ho, for the oarsman poising 
His brawny back under the live sunbeam ! 



IN CENTRAL PARK. 

Did you know ? when we gallop, 

My horse and his rider, 
I see my lost love ; 

I gallop beside her. 
There she rides broken-hearted 
That maiden departed 
And farther away than the isles of the sea. 

My dear is not buried, 
My girl is not drowned, 

My laugh is unworried, 
With praise I am crowned ; 

She dwells in the city 

Rich, wedded and pretty 
Among her own kindred five minutes from me. 

I seldom espy her, 

Avoid her when nigh her, 
She is farther away than the isles of the sea. 



In Central Park. 1 1 1 

But, strange! in a gallop 
I turn broken-hearted 

The wraith of her old self I meet. 
She's alive, though departed ; 

Though honored, a robber ; 

Though smiling, a sobber; 
Though trusted, a cheat. 

For her body soft clothing ; 

Her soul, hidden loathing ; 
Her mind — not a sentence complete. 

She canters so near me 

I feel she must hear me 
Though I know 'tis a falsehood I see. 

But when at my talking 

My horse falls a-walking 

Though I yearn, though I sigh to her, 

Speak to her, cry to her — 
She is gone farther off than the isles of the sea. 



MAY, 1874. 

I PACED a mighty town from end to end, 

And who d'ye think I found was happy there ? 
Of joyous sign street after street was bare 

Until I came o'er a dry fount to bend 

Where two lean curs, racing in endless fun, 
Paid a glad homage to the insulted sun. 



POEMS OF OTHER LANDS. 



AN ARAB? 

» 

Yes, like an Arab, sworn the desert still 

Shall hold him gaunt within its virgin bounds, 
Like him I march. For he perceiving sounds, 
Sees through the gateways of an arid hill 
Wide gleaming lakes where birds of luscious notes 
Swing the green palms to throbbing of their throats, 
Where flowers expand, whose face, eyes, ears form 

one 
Clear trembling cup to drink of the filtered sun 
And mark the time to harmonies begun. 

Yes, like the Arab. For the fine reins fret 

His slender mare, and, whirling in his seat, 
The rider stares. What hankerings beset 

His dry thin frame and stirrup-weary feet 
For yon deep reeds, yon little waves that smile 
About the grass roots ! Was it worth the while 
Such blisses in this brief life to forswear? 



n6 An Arab? 

But, sworn being sworn, mayhap the prairies there 
Are thin mirage and pictures of the air ! 

Yes, like the Arab. For he may not bide 

Should these be real ; but false — why, then he may 
Prick with his spear their shadowy array 
And chase the enchantment o'er the desert wide. 
But if. . . but if. . . ! The senses are not clear 
When long the sun has charred, and hideous glare 
Of baked gray plain to weary brain has stung, 
When heat roars past the ears like anthems sung 
Deep down in hills by many an Afreet's tongue. 

Yes, like the Arab. For to-day, who knows, 
Though all were true, his foe may not, the Turk, 
Within the bosquet by the water lurk, 
A scourge God wields to pay for broken vows ? 
Far better, sands were o'er his body rolled, 
Than steed and man were into bondage sold 
Thus, like the Arab, I too see what's fair 
Soft and enticing — and as little dare 
To prove the dangers that await me there. 



THE BRIDE REPENTANT. 

PALE was the bride. As in a tower two dusky lamps 

are set 
Her eyes lit up her slender frame from zone to car- 

canet. 

Upon the board a foamwhite cloth with isles of silver 

strewn 
Lay stretched between her and that heart she once 

had called her own ; 

And as the heavy darkling wings of moths at night- 
fall flee 

Toward deadly flames, his sombre thoughts forever 
crossed that sea. 

Then who of all the guests could read how kissed and 

passed and came 
Those looks of hers that seemed to freeze, those icicles 

of flame? 



1 1 8 The Bride Repentant. 

Who saw him slide among the flowers a little paper 

white, 
Among the roses sent in sport across the board so 

bright ? 

Would she accept ? For one long breath his fate in 

balance hung ; 
Then in her glove she slipped it quick. Warm lay the 

snake and stung. 

The feeble churl she was to wed grew pallid at her 

mien ; 
She rose and sauntered toward the door — to greet 

them soon, they ween. 

But o'er the hill where red's the moon two lovers wend 
their way ; 

With groan and tear for many a year that churl un- 
wed shall stay. 



THE SISTERS OF FINISTERRE. 

"FOR me he came ; I drew him here 

With my brave locks of gold. 
Then who are you to make him cheer 

You black-haired huzzy bold ! 

" Think not to own what once was mine, 

Await no ruth from me, 
Who bade you round his heartstrings twine 

Your false simplicity? 

" See you this bodkin ? When alone 

In dreams of him you burn 
From slumber soft without a groan 

A pale corpse you may turn ! " 



The younger wept and prayed and moaned ; 

She barred her chamber door ; 
But at mid night, sans word or sound, 

Claire stood her bed before. 



120 The Sisters. 

Young Renee from her tender paps 
Has tossed the linen white. 

The greedy moon her color laps 
With its small tongues so bright. 

On the left side the elder pried 

Softly the wrapper off. 
That sobbing heart could be descried 

Still quivering from the scoff. 

But soon, a ruby humming bird 
Caught in a flower of snow, 

It heaved no more. Without a word 
Claire struck the small sharp blow. 



THE FOUR KONANS. 
(An Irish Legend)) 

WALES, A.D. 560. 

MERRILY clanged the harps, and shrill the pipers 

blew; 
Around the royal banquet jest and laughter flew; 
When in by open doors a stranger, blithe to see, 
Marched with a joyous air and bearing brave and free. 

He stayed not with the lowly, nor stopped he at the 

salt ; 
Upon the king's own platform lightly did he vault ; 
He swept aside the steward, who asked him of his 

rank, 
And 'twixt the royal pair upon the bench he sank. 

No shield against the wall his place had told to him ; 
No question would he answer, that hero brown and 

slim ; 
Upon the jeweled cup a careless hand he stretched, 
His dagger from the king's plate a haunch of venison 

fetched. 
6 



122 The Four Konans. 

" Beware, O hero ! " whispered the steward in his ear, 
" Yon champion of the black look, who reacheth for 

his spear, 
Hath rights on every marrow-bone that comes upon 

this board ; 
Crack one with reckless hand, and crowns must crack, 

my lord." 

The stranger laughed, and quaffed with lips as cran- 
berries red. 

All golden were the curls about his shoulders shed ; 

His eyes flashed blue as ice when north winds yarely 
blow ; 

His forehead had the splendor of newly fallen snow. 

He stripped of meat the marrow-bone, and grasped it 

by the heel : 
" Here hast thou, doughty champion, thy rights upon 

this meal ! " 
He cast the bone like lightning that champion in the 

face, 
Who moved nor spear, nor uttered word, but swooned 

within his place. 



The Four Konans. 123 

Then up rose all the household, with javelin, targe 

and sword ; 
And up rose that tall stranger, and beat them from 

the board. 
A rain, a hail of mighty blows he cast upon the crew ; 
But ever on the frightened queen sweet looks and 

mild he threw. 

" Now hold ! " the Welsh king ordered ; "let all once 

more be set," — 
Though with his massive weapons his aged fingers 

fret — 
" A champion great is here, and though concealed his 

name 
Well knows he how to guard him from slight and 

blame and shame." 



" O, wondrous youth," entreated the brave queen 

where she sate, 
"Tell me thy father!" "Comely queen, I spring 

from Adam great. 
My mother was a queen, yet Eve was not her name ; 
She was as like thyself as sister-twins are same." 



124 The Four Konans. 

" Pledge me, O champion, pledge ! " she cried, " I love 

thy sparkling face ; 
Alas, like thine was once to view my darling Konan's 

grace. 
But what is that I see? How cam'st thou by the 

ring?" 
" That ? " said the youth. " It is some spoil my father 

home did bring." 



Then rose the wan queen moaning from that un- 
toward repast 

And in the flames her diadem, her royal wimple cast ; 

" It was my son, my Konan, thy cruel father slew! 

Oh, who of all my household will wreak his death on 
you?" 



The hero bounded after, and caught her by the arm : 
" Mother ! " he whispered ; " silence ! Thy Konan's 

met no harm. 
Behold thy Konan safe, and, grown to man's estate, 
By land and sea in battles become a hero great ! " 



The Four Konans. 125 

The queen her wailing stinted. " Right soon will 

shine the truth ! 
Bare me thy shoulder quickly, thou fair and god-like 

youth ! 
Lo, here beneath the white skin I thrust a shred of 

gold; 
O king, rejoice! Rejoice ye, men ! Here stands my 

Konan bold ! " 



The great king roared with laughter, and turned not 

once his head : 
" This day a year three champions that self-same 

fable said ! 
The first we called the Ruddy. His eyes were green 

as grass. 
For one year's proof I bade him go and round all 

Britain pass. 

" Next day came Konan Fair ; my son he claimed to 

be; 
Light were his locks ; a hundred were of his company. 



126 The Four Konans. 

Scarce was he gone when Konan (but he had curls of 

brown) 
With thrice one hundred sworders approached our 

royal town. 

" Now Konan Red, the wealthy, and Konan Fair, of 

steeds, 
And Konan Brown, the joyous, who boasteth mighty 

deeds, 
Will back return to-morrow. But, ere the day is 

done, 
All Britain shall be certain which Konan is my son. 

" So Konan, thou the fourth, whose thatch with gold 

is set, 
Wilt find thyself to-morrow by threefold Konans met. 
Back to our feast ! for thou a comely champion art ; 
I wish thee well. My son or not, fall to with joyous 

heart ! " 



With a Druid's wide eyes young Konan the Tall 
Leapt from his couch at the peep of day : 
" The sky in the west is red ! The fall 
Of Konan the Ruddy I soothly say. 



The -Four Konans. 

" Konan Fair ! — 

Blood's on the cloud in the east ! For thee 
Hope there is none ; in thy maid-fine hair 
Blood ere the evening shall be. 

" Konan Brown ! — 

Light is the north, where thou comest in pride ! 
Safe is thy life, though fortune may frown ; 
What guardeth, I wonder, thy side ? " 



127 



To the narrow deep river looked Konan the Tall ; 
With clangor of arms strode down from the ridge. 
The heroes were coming. First, ruddiest of all, 
One champion set foot on the bridge. 

" Konan the Ruddy, whom fine satins clothe 
Halt, and give answer ! What longest thou most 
To see the bridge full of ? " " Of gold," red-hair quoth ; 
" Of gold and of jewels a host." 

" Ha ! " answered Konan the scoffer, " thou'rt red, 
But Konan art not, nor a royal son ! 
The offspring of merchants or chapmen instead ; 
See, thus in thy shamming undone ! " 



128 The Four Konans. 

Over the bridge flew Konan the Tall, 

Beat up his guard and clove through his breast. 

"You are right," cried his spearsmen, "well earned 

was his fall ; 
That a chapman he was, is confessed ! " 

O'er the hills to the stream came Konan the Fair 
From eastward, brave with his warlike band. 
" Now halt," cried the hero, " and answer bear. 
What would you the bridge here contained ? " 

" What, bold asker ? why cattle and steeds, 
Oxen and sheep to the brim ! " he replied ; 
"Aha ! " quoth Konan, " then those are thy needs? 
Fair liar, the grave be thy bride ! " 

Over the planks rushed Konan the Tall ; 
The sword-play was sharp, but he humbled his crest. 
" 'Tis plain thou wert born as a farmer! " And all 
Those followers replied : " Thou hast guessed ! " 

Last of the heroes came Konan the Brown 
With stately companions from out of the north. 
" What would I the bridge were set with ? A crown 
Of heroes ! of foes of my worth ! " 



The Four Konans. 129 

His brow all perplexed stood Konan the Tall 
Propt on his sword. " Thou art prince, indeed ; 
Yet claim'st to be Konan ? " " My claim it is small," 
Quoth the brown-locked one, " as I rede. 

" I am not Konan. A Norman king 

My father is : he hath sons five pair ; 

And so the round world on adventures I ring 

Some childless monarch to heir." 

Over the bridge stepped Konan the Tall, 
Reached him, laughing, a brawny hand ; 
" I am Konan," he spake, "but whatever befall, 
We will sword-brothers be, on sea, on land." 

6* 



ULF IN IRELAND. 

(A. D. 790.) 

WHAT then, what if my lips do burn, 

Husband, husband ; 
What though thou see'st my red lips burn, 
Why look'st thou with a look so stern, 

Husband? 

It was the keen wind through the reed, 

Husband, husband : 
'Twas wind made sharp with sword-edge reed 
That made my tender lips to bleed, 

Husband. 

And hath the zvind a human tooth. 

Woman, woman ? 
Can light wind mark like human tooth 
A shameful scar of love uncouth, 

Woman f 



Ulf in Ireland. 131 

What horror lurks within your eyes, 

Husband, husband ? 
What lurking horror strains your eyes, 
What black thoughts from your heart arise, 

Husband ? 

Who stood beside you at the gate, 

Woman, woman ? 
Who stood so near you by the gate 
No moon your shapes could separate, 

Woman ? 



So God me save, 'twas I alone 

Husband, husband ! 
So Christ me save, 'twas I alone 
Stood listening to the ocean moan, 
Husband ! 

Then hast thou four feet at the least, 

Woman, woman ! 
Thy Christ hath lent thee four at least, 
Oh, viler than four-footed beast, 
Woman ! 



132 Ulf in Ireland. 

A heathen witch hath thee unmanned, 

Husband, husband ! 
A foul witchcraft, alas, unmanned : 
Those saw'st some old tracks down the sand, 
Husband ! 

Yet were they tracks that went not far, 

Woman, woman ; 
Those ancient foot-marks went not far, 
Or else you search the harbor bar, 

Woman. 



It is not yours alone that bleed, 
Woman, zvoman ; 
Smooth lips not yours may also bleed, 
Your wound has been avenged with speed, 
Woman ! 

What talk you so of bar and wound, 

Husband, husband? 
What ghastly sign of sudden wound 
And kinsman smitten to the ground, 
Husband ? 



Ulf in Ireland. 133 

/ saw your blood upon his cheek. 

Woman, zvoman ; 
The moon had marked his treacherous cheek, 
I marked his heart beside the creek, 

Woman ! 

What, have you crushed the only flower, 

Husband, husband ! 
Among our weeds the only flower? 
Henceforward get you from my bower, 

Husband ! 



I love you not ; I loved but him, 
Husband, husband ; 

In 3II the world I loved but him ; 

Not hell my love for Brenn shall dim, 
Husband! 

He's caught her by her jet-black hair; 

Sorrow, sorrow ! 
He's bent her head back by the hair 
Till all her throbbing throat lies bare — 

Sorrow ! 



134 Ulf in Ireland. 

You knew me fiercer than the wolf, 
Woman, woinan; 

You knew I well am named the wolf; 

I shall both you and him engulf, 
Woman. 

Yet I to you was alzvays kind, 
Woman, woman ; 

To serpents only fools are kind ; 

Yet still with love of you I'm blind, 
Wo7nan. 

I'll look no more upon your face, 
Woman, woinan ; 
These eyes shall never read your face, 
For you shall die in this small space, 
Woman ! 

He's laid his mouth below her chin, 

Horror! 
That throat he kissed below the chin 
No breath thereafter entered in : 

Horror, horror ! 



THE MAID OF THE BENI YEZID. 

About 1840. 

ZULEIKA ! The Turk ! ! Zuleika, stand forth, 

If Arab you are to the core ; 
By the east, by the north 
Euphrates down-pour'th, 

To the west is the marsh without shore. 

Zuleika, be swift ! Zuleika, our tents 
Are girt by deep marshes and foes ; 

To the south like a fence 

A squadron immense 

Of Turks, while we slumbered, arose ! 

" Up, maid of the desert ! If still the old stamp 

Lingers on in the seed of Yezid, 
Deck your charms without lamp 
And list for the tramp 

Of the mare never stranger has rid. 



136 The Maid of the Beni Yezid. 

"You shall lead on our charge in the wild Arab 
way, 

You shall rally the young men and old, 
Like the hawk on the jay 
We shall cleave through the fray : 

Your deed by the bards shall be told." 

With pride, with delight, after old Arab wont 
For a bridal she decks her sweet form. 

To the foe, to the front, 

To the battle's quick brunt 

She is whirling the keen desert swarm. 

When first on Euphrates the thousand-edged 
sword 

Of the sun the fog-serpent had gashed, 
With one man's accord 
The whole Arab horde 

On their foe like a thunderbolt crashed. 

Then vain were the cannon of Omar the Turk, 
Sword or pistol-flash — onward they raced ! 

Short, sharp is the work, 

In a dust column's murk 
Are vanished the sons of the waste. 



The Maid of the Beni Yezid. 137 

But Zuleika? Alas, the mare is too frail 
That swerves from the cannon aside ! 

As birds on the gale 

Are caught in the sail 

Entrapped is the desert's fair bride. 

She has played, she has lost. With a firm pallid 
face 

By Omar the wrathful she stands : 
" Dread lord, grant me grace 
That here in this place 

Undefiled I may die by your hands ! " 

Then still is each pulse while Omar his brow 
Rubs clear of the wrinkles and cries : 

" Not so, for I vow 

That in Bagdad enow 

Of ladies shall welcome this prize ! 

" Fair bloom of the desert, a princess's train 
And honors henceforth you shall boast ; 

When the year turns again 

To the season of rain 

Choose your mate from the best of my host/' 



138 The Maid of the Bent Yezid. 

Zuleika says naught, but far o'er the plain 

Her heart follows after her kin, 
From the eyes of disdain 
Her tears ever rain 

As to Bagdad the horsemen ride in. 

When the year turned again, was Zuleika a bride? 

With a Turk the proud maid would not mate. 
Like a queen in her pride 
To the desert they ride ; 

All the city looks on from the gate. 

Her tribesmen have come from the tents of the free 
For the maid they had mourned as a slave ; 

By each gay saddle tree 

All Bagdad may see 

How Turks love to honor the brave. 

" Farewell, noble Omar, and Bagdad, farewell ! 

Your pleasures are not to our taste ; 
In the close town to dwell 
For an Arab is hell — 

We must wed, live and die in the waste ! " 



THE GALLIC HERAKLES. 

CLEAN-WITTED Lucian, world-wise traveler, 
Records one picture shown him by the Gauls 

Which caused in that god-scoffer such a stir 

As when through scorn a childhood's legend palls. 
But wrath at seeing a Greek god bantered falls 

When a hoar, grave-robed priest the reddening Lucian 
sees 

And tells why Gauls appear to mock great Herakles. 

There stands the god with features creased and swart ; 

His back is bent and decked with lion skin ; 
His trembling hands a brazen club support, 

On lion's mane his hair streams white and thin. 

With smiling face he turns a brow serene 
On a vast press of tribes, that, in a rabble rout 
As worshipers and slaves still follow him about. 



140 The Gallic Herakles. 

They beg to follow, and in sooth must needs, 
For round each suppliant's ear is wound a chain, 

A hairfine chain of gold and amber beads 
Like links of sunshine on the morning main ; 
And, as the sun will grasp in one the skein 

Of jeweled beams converging, so do these ropes run 

With stops of ambry gold to join that Smiling One. 

Wonders yet more ! The old man, laughing, juts 
His tongue between his lips, and lo, the tip 

Is pierced, and lo, each several cord abuts 

Thereto and binds, nor can there one cord slip. 
Seeming to move, each slave would fain outstrip 

His mate in haste and zeal ; dearly they love their 
chains, 

For each one feels that smile a guerdon for his pains. 

The Druid spake : Your Strong God crushed the west 
And won, ye say, through prowess of his arm. 

We say his strength was in his tongue compressed 
And that his words confounded those who harm. 
'Gainst eloquence we Druids have no charm. 

His god-like, lightning force and weight as of a hill 

Could have availed him naught. It was his gray- 
haired skill. 



ON THE MYTHSTONE AT GRUTLI. 

STAY where you are. Have for your lot no scorn. 
Ages ago yon bowlder-rock forlorn 
Was from its mother-mountain fiercely torn 
On glacier's back from its primeval home 
Down the vast vales for centuries to roam. 
To-day it is an altar where was sworn 
The fall of tyrants. Here was freedom born. 



AMATORY. 



HIST! 

When bats encroach on swallows' ground 
And cats no longer keep in bound, 
When dogs withdraw and in the straw 
The rats are rustling round : 

When jealous shutters open wide 
And humble folk at supper bide, 
When lovers know of whistles low 
And pretty knots are tied : 

When sun has doffed his crown and gown 
And, smoothing out his kingly frown, 
Has laid to bed his weary head 
Along his couch of down : 

Then I have leave a song to weave 
For one who would be whispered : 
A night-blown flower ... a listening bower. 
And nothing save a lisp heard ! 
7 



THE TALL WHEAT. 

The wheat-stalks bow on the mountain side 

(Here and there and around they go) 
The wild winds over the acres ride 
And hammer the young ears low. 

A path winds through 

And thither come two 
With souls like the tall wheat bending, 

They shun one another 

Lest sighs that they smother 
Break forth — and their day have an ending. 

The tall wheat over the pathway droops 
(Here and there and around it blows) 
The wild wind laughs and a tress as she stoops 
Of her gold hair over him throws. 

One by one through the arch 

These timid souls march 
Where the wheat makes a fine green awning. 

But why, past the hill, 

Are they sitting so still ? 
Hush — away ! 'Tis their day that is dawning ! 



IN THE GREEN WOODS. 

WHAT ! you can see on every tree 

The little warblers billing ? 
And here canst be alone with me 

Not willing — willing ? 
From love abstain ? O where's the gain 

Of precious moments' spilling? 
Soon, soon with pain you'll sigh in vain : 

" I'm willing, willing ! " 

The glorious day, the balmy May, 

The buds of life you're chilling. 
I'll hear no nay. In mercy say 

You're willing, willing. 
The butterflies together rise, 

The thrush with love is thrilling ; 
Hide, hide your eyes ! I hold the prize : 

You're willing, willing ! 



PRELUDE FOR THE HARP. 

Give me music, give sweet glances! 

All I ask is in the phrase ; 
Melody the zest enhances 
Of the blaze 

Issuing from eyelids clear : — 
Give me music, give sweet glances 

Sprung from hearts I hold most dear, 
While the gusty sound entrances 
Ear and ear 

With the rush of angel bands. . . 

Give me music, give sweet glances 
Till with close enwoven hands 

One compounded soul advances 
Toward the lands 
Where is neither night or day. . . 

Give me music, give sweet glances ; 



Prelude for the Harp. 149 

They shall lift me far away 
Far from envy's poisoned lances 
From a clay 
Wet by each malignant stream. . . 

Give me music, give sweet glances, 
Choose for me the loftier dream ! 
Let me weave celestial fancies 

On the scheme 
Set whereby the comet dances : 
Music give me, lovely glances, 
Give me music and sweet glances ! 



MADRIGAL. 

Beauty's not an empty mask, 
Beauty's deeper than the skin, 

For within 
Runs the blood of manly sires, 
Thrills the nerve that lover-fires, 

Void of sin, 
Fashioiled with the purest flame 
In some crystal-hearted dame : 

Sweet the task ! 

Lovely face is not a fool, 
Gold hairs often deck a brain, 

Though the strain 
Strong of wit is not her need, 
So the world give ample heed 

To her reign ! 
Why should crispy-lipped beauty 
Go to wisdom for her duty, 

So she rule ? 



Madrigal. 151 

What is sweeter than the mouth 
In the meeting of its fellow? 

Kisses mellow 
Lurk in corners of the lip, 
Else you ever downward slip 

By the billow 
Of the dimple-dinted chin 
Till the pulsing throat you win 

In the south. 

Goblets amber-heaped are good, 
Good are glasses slowly drained 

And unfeigned 
Lives of generous love — by sorrow, 
At the ill may come to-morrow 

Just restrained! 
Fruit to eat and wine to sip 
And to touch with rev'rent lip 

Maid and bud ! 



INVOCATION. 

Scent of the rose ! . . . 

Breath of the new-ploughed field and verdurous sigh 
From copses budding ! . . . 
Myrrhs that the chafing boughs 
Of aromatic pine-trees cause to fly 
O'er coily fern-tops, studding 

The layers damp of fronds that heap in long wind- 
rifted rows . . . 



Bloom of the quince 
So firm and ruddy and tender to foretell 
Crisp fruit and solid ! . . . 
Heart of the forest prince 
Of odor nuttier than the sandal smell ! . . . 
And all ye marshes squalid 

Whose fog a savory saltness pricks, whose veins the 
clear tides rinse . . . 



Invocation. 153 

Hair of the night 

Black where the stars glimmer in sparks of gold 
Through tresses fragrant . . . 
Breeze that in smooth cool flight 
Trails a strange heat across the listening wold . . . 
Breast of the coy and vagrant 

Uncertain spring, beneath whose cold glows the great 
heart of light . . . 

Clouds of the blue, 

Crowned by the sun and torn by lightning-jag . . . 
And joyous sparkles 
In seas and drops of dew . . . 
Ye smiles and frowns that alter where the crag 
Glitters and darkles ! . . . 

Hear me, ye blissful, that alone see why I call on you ! 
7* 



SONG. 

THE man who is not faint with bliss 
When he obtains his darling's kiss, 
He knows not love; for him the snow 
Is cold, and wet the way below ; 
The gale is harsh, and dark the night, 
Like common mortals is his plight. 

The warmth that quits her tender sides 
A spicewind is that frost derides ; 
The crystal marvels 'neath her brow 
Can melt gray icicles, I know ; 
But when she smiles, the sky grows clear, 
The crocus springs, and May is here. 

O kiss that passed in wind and sleet 
What witchery sowed you 'twixt our feet ! 
From out the snow a ruby rose 
Sprang glad : red petals swathed us close, 
And couched us warm — sans hope, sans fears- 
For ten long breaths, or ten short years ! 



SONG FOR WET WEATHER. 

The gloomier the day 
And foggier the weather, 

The surer love will play 
At breaking of his tether. 
The murkier the weather, 

The nearer comes my may, 
Fog-belts link together 

Those apart who stay. 

Here's a kiss — away 
Through the misty weather, 

Light as rides a fay 
Straddling on a feather, 
Fine as o'er the heather 

Skip the webs of May ! 
Love through wind and weather 

Always makes his way. 



THE BLUSH. 

If fragrances were colors, I would liken 

A blush that deepens in her thoughtful face 

To that aroma which pervades the place 

Where woodmen cedars to the heart have stricken ; 

If tastes were hues, the blissful dye I'd trace 

In upland strawberries, or wintergreen ; 

If sound, why then, to shy and mellow bass 

Of mountain thrushes, heard, yet seldom seen. 

Or, say that hues are felt : then would it seem 
Most like to cobwebs borne on southern gales 
Against a spray of jasmine. But the glow 

Itself is found where sweet-briar petals gleam 
Through tend'rest hoar-frost, or upon the snow 
Of steadfast hills when shadows brim the vales. 



BLUE IRIS. 

And have you watched the lily proudly stand, 

The blue pond-lily in the shallow reach 
Where little waves incline her like a wand 

Ere lisping life out on the mossy beach ? 
Just so my love moves beautiful and slow 

To fine dance measures in her own wild fancies ; 

All secrets fair are centred in her glances 
And round her feet the waves of feeling flow. 



But when she's by, so magic is their power, 

Of her gray eyes I see naught save the blue ; 
I may not ponder all her beauty's dower 



Nor feast mine eyes on a less heavenly hue ; 
Yet thirsty men will dream of cool stalks through 
The exquisite azure of the iris flower. 



SONG. 

Light, light, light is the hand of my love in the 
morning — 
Light as the foam, cool as the breeze, white as the 
day; 
Dear, dear, dear the vein that her arm is adorning, 
Blue as the hills, irises smothered in spray. 

Warm, warm, warm is the shoulder I press in our 
roaming ; 
Kind as a pet, timid and brave, tender and true — 
Hush, hush, hush, guess what I found in the gloaming 
Richer than roses, sweeter than wine, fresher than 
dew! 



FINGERS. 

Who will tell me the secret, the cause 

For the life in her swift-flying hands ? 
How weaves she the shuttle with never a pause 

With keys of the octave for strands? 
Have they eyes, those soft fingers of her, 

That they kiss in the darkness the keys 
As in darkness the poets aver 

Lover's lips will find lips by degrees? 

Ay, marvels they are in their shadowy dance, 
But who is the god that has given them soul? 

Where learned they the spell other souls to entrance, 
Where the heart other hearts to control? 

Twas the noise of the wave at the prow, 

The musical lapse on the beaches, 
Twas the surf in the night when the land breezes 
blow, 

The song of the tide in the reaches. 



1 60 Fingers. 

She has drawn their sweet influence home 
To a soul not yet clear but profound, 

Where it blows like the Persian sea-foam 
Into pearls— 
Into pearls of melodious sound. 



IN PRAISE OF LOVE. 

When true souls at last have broke 
Through the mist of petty ills, 

Vivid as the sap in oak 
Love their every fibre fills. 

Sweetness free from bitter lees ! 
Life that knows not deathly stings, 
Sunburst that unstinted flings 

New-born aureoles on the breeze ! 



Maddening kisses, kisses pure, 

Mixtures clear of heaven and earth, 

Instant joys that aye endure, 
Solemn ecstasies of mirth ! 



1 62 In Praise of Love. 

Let one soul musician be ; 

One, the docile sounding chord : 
Which is, then, the loftier lord — 

Gentlest finger or the key ? 

Kisses tender, kisses chaste, 
And embracings void of heat, 

Faults confessed and errors traced 
Make the tale of love complete. 

Beauty seen in commonplace, 
Humbleness, self-sacrifice ! 
True love can unlock the skies, 

Find of God the certain trace. 

Love has made a desert bloom, 
Piled the towers of a town, 
Won for thinkers high renown, 

Plucked men from a miser's tomb. 

Love has beat a mail-clad host, 
Stilled the politician's strife, 

On a scoffer's lip the boast 

Turned to prayer for heavenly life. 



In Praise of Love. 163 

Think you faith could have its birth 

Without perfect love of two ? 
What made Christ a god on earth ? 

Love, that after death was true ! 

Kisses gentle, clean as soil, 

Sweet as wells to those who thirst ! 
So another's weal be first, 

Sorrow is of bliss the foil. 



SERENADE. 

WHEN on the pane your face you press 
The twin lights gazing toward the shore 
Are my two eyes forevermore. 

Behold and weigh their dumb distress : 
Against that one sweet fleeting sight 
They bide them constant all the night. 

The gray gull blown from out the sea 

That gains swift- wing'd your purple shore 
When far out grievous tempests roar 

Is my embodied thought of thee. 

My world, so dry with hopeless drouth, 
Grows fresh at thought of one red mouth. 

The wild-rose reaching forth a hand 
To grasp your robe on bridle path 
Be sacred from your gentle wrath, 

It is my longing fills the land. 



Serenade. 165 

The grasses on each favored sod 

Bow down to kiss where you have trod. 

The winds that in the chimney blow 

Are babbled words of tenderness 

And tributes to your loveliness 
The red leaves falling from the bough. 

In love so wide and yet so rare 

Each thing of nature asks a share. 



FOR MANY LEAVES. 

FOR many leaves about my high-perched home 
I may not watch her fair-appointed manse ; 
For many leaves I may not even glance 
From mine on hill to hers beside the foam ; 
For many leaves, however tempest boom, 
I may not see that her dear roof is spared, 
Nor even haste when the red bolt has flared 
To note the unshaken taper in her room. 

But when the keen-edged sickles of the north 
Shall reap my leaves, say, shall I not then look 
From hill to shore athwart the blackened boughs ? 

Ah yes ; but all at a wide house forsook — 
Chimneys from whence no kind smoke issueth forth 
And unswept eaves piled high with eddying snows ! 



A SPELL. 

SINCE you were mine what is't that lies 

Within my yearning palm? 
Since mine you were, what is't that tries 

To stir my restful calm? 

Since you were mine, I feel you still 

In hollow of my hand 
Crunched fine and small as fairies will 

Beneath Titania's wand. 

A winsome packet of delight, 

A kernel wee and fruity, 
The pith of love and O the might 

And crystal fine of beauty ! 

Like fragrant inmost lotus-leaves, 
Or murmured words that bless, 

Or dye that perfect truth achieves 
Through steel of faithfulness ! 



i6S A Spell. 

A monograph of sinuous lines, 
The humbircTs iris throat ; 

Or incense from cathedral pines — 
A songster's pearliest note ! 

Now mine you are, a spell of these 

Has nested in my palm 
And, as the moonbeams stir the trees, 

It stirs me from my calm. 



MAGNOLIA. 

O HAVE you seen the tree that wears 
On leafless limbs in yearning spring 
A thousand white wax-candle flames ? 
Grim winter with his draggled wing 
Not one of them to extinguish dares : 
Their radiance all his bluster tames. 



A mystic candelabrum 'tis 
Silent, clear burning while we throb 
With languor 'gainst some coming heat. 
Myrrhs from a thousand censers rob 
Of sleep our eyes ; we feel the kiss 
Of parted lips on brows and feet. 

A stand of candles fit for kings, 
For gods, for jeweled memories ! 
Yet was there One no eye hath seen, 



1 70 Magnolia. 

A lamp so much more rare that these 
Are earthly gleams and paltry things 
To her, of pearls and emeralds, queen ? 

Betwixt the hours of twelve and one 
A dreamer walking through the night 
Beheld her bloom. Ah, how he gazed ! 
The spring-god plucked her from his sight ; 
Now drain his red veins of the sun 
Ere her clear vision be erased ! 

Ye are not less fair, blooms that stay, 
With you be no comparison ; 
I love you, once her radiant maids. 
Leant by your iron gate, alone, 
My night of life is clear like day ; 
For moon, not glorious memory, fades. 



A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN. 

I. Free. 

It sleeps. The master's first soft prelude poured 
A deep oblivion through its every vein. 
It sleeps. And slowly from the shape I drain 
Myself, the soul within its tissue stored. 
This instant one with it — the next I gain 
Free air from what was my own self, and gaze 
On limbs stung rigid with delicious pain 
Plunged fathom deep within an opiate maze. 



But I myself, the spirit, thus draw free 
And widely float upon the sway of tide, 
The swirl of tide and shadowy harmony 
Too cloudy-great for that cold figure there ! 
But hark beyond ! Do I not hear beside 
An undercurrent set I know not where ? 



172 A Sonata of Beethoven. 

II. Away. 

The moon is hid, but fractured moonstarbeam 
Lies sifted fine on wood and hill and dale. 
Within yon room how lieth still and pale 
The house I kept ! — and yet to smile would seem 
As, now it bade me back, now forth to sail 
Far, far away upon the shoreless air. . . 
Is that a footstep on the outer stair — 
Some friend who soon at those blind eyes will 
quail . . ? 

What then ? I am fast fixed within a stream 
Of hasting passion and must even float 
Impatient and ecstatic ; for it grows 
At last on me that my soul's centre knows 
What shall be found ; as when from lover's throat 
Come sounds to her that sleeping walks in dream. 

III. Through Woods. 

The moon is hid, but what mysterious shades 
Gaze deep-eyed forth from yonder quivering woods ! 
The treetops 'wait a secret ; o'er them broods 
A spell-bound hush, a shudder dim of glades 



A Sonata of Beethoven. i j^ 

Ere fall the dread tornado's panther moods: — 
Though the beast springs not, yet they lean anear 
And, fain to shriek together in their fear, 
Brace them against soft ruin-ripe preludes. 

But can I keep from drawing toward that dark, 
And can I aught but merge my dim outline 
With thickets gray, black trunks of the forest stark, 
With awed and moveless spaces 'neath the pine ? 
I'm borne one way, a peal an outlook horn 
Blows clear and smooth from fog-walled barque for- 
lorn. 



IV. Through Marshes. 

Beyond the wood, beyond the listening hill 

The deep sea meadows watch the glimmering moon. 

Right soon with cool her magic force shall fill 

Their creepy hair, and from the clouds right soon 

Bursting, on tawny reaches, wavering creeks 

Her strange cold disk the dewy drops shall spill ;— 

Past which my yearning sound-borne outline seeks 

A goal half-known. Is this the gaunt windmill 



1 74 A Sonata of Beethoven, 

Those knew that were my feet, and, prist the pears, 
Is this the homestead that my former frame — 
That body moveless at the step on stairs — 
Frequented ? Lo, is yonder sash the same 
That, lifting, raised me many a night to heaven, 
That, ah, fast closed, to many a crime has driven ? 

V. Home. 

A wind has blown across the whispering marsh, 

A gale has torn the smooth moon-veil to shreds, 

On rusty hinge a shutter grindeth harsh 

And ghostly footsteps halt along the leads. 

See, the sash moves ! A pale and blue-vein'd hand, 

A tender oval whiteness flowed about 

By wind-puffed hair, wherein slow burning stand 

Two diamonds set in opals, solve the doubt 

Of who I am and where. She knows me near ; 
She lays grief-weary lips against the gale. 
What is't to me that she is pale, so pale, 
When soon to me her soul shall issue out 
And all is done ? What is it, though I hear 
Miles back a frightened knock, quick steps, a piteous 
shout ? 



A Sonata of Beethoven. 175 

VI. Nirvana. 

The moon is out, the wind is up, and now — 
Leagues, leagues away across wide-writhing grass 
And tossing trees where I of late did pass 
Forefated, straight as flies the unsated crow — 
I feel how hands a-tremble prove my heart 
And hear husht voices, quivering sobs enow. 
In vain. Again that face shall never flow 
With human grief, nor that cold smile depart. 

But see, a pure lotus from its dusky sheath, 
A sister moon just broken from her cloud, 
She issueth white from many a parted wreath 
Of dusky hair, and now she calls aloud 
Some name once mine. . . 

A flame ! Her clear soul's essence slips 
To steep for aye with mine, from her fast-whitening 
lips! 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



SMOKE. 

ACROSS our round unwinking sight, 

Our shallow, wide and thoughtless eyes 

There flutters something soft and bright : 
We watch it, ceaseless dancing, rise, 

And, happed about by swaddling-bands, 

First ope for it our half-closed hands. 

Before we beg for sun or moon, 

Or things sea-grown or blown by land, 

We lie on mother's knee and croon 

With hope to clutch its shadowy hand : 

We scarce can be restrained from creeping 

To where from golden core it's leaping. 

And though we fear the figures spun 
Grotesque along its upward track, 

Yet childish eyes are never done 
With peering up the chimney-stack, 



1 80 Smoke. 

While clouds that eddy thick and dim 
May turn to witch or wizard grim. 

Within its pearly jets a youth 

May often see a waved white arm : 

Its shifting scenes have taught the truth 
To maidens flushed with sweet alarm, 

Their foolish hearts once set a-beating 

By feathery faces sly and fleeting. 

The fumes of that sharp Indian weed 
Which blew disease from warrior's limb, 

In lonely men such comfort breed 
Their meat is second to their whim : 

Yea, myriad beauties twisting steal 

Through careless eyes, till hard men feel. 

O quick habiliment of grace 

From fire in liberal beauty welling ! 

Most free of gift, yourself in space 
With godlike bounty still dispelling ! 

Smiling, you mock close-fisted men 

Who delve to hoard and hoard again. 



Smoke. 181 

But cheerily you beckon him 

Who sees you crown a cherished roof 

When waste of brain and chafe of limb 
Are borne for darling one's behoof ; 

You streak in pledge the morning pale, 

Or skyward scrawl a harrowing tale. 

Along the jagg'd horizon rim 

Grandly your ocean runes are written, 

Of friends who far in safety steam, 

Of barques the red-jawed worm has smitten : 

Gaunt men who thread the wilderness 

At sight of you kneel down to bless. 

About the high altar's pyramid 

The cloudy ramps where incense chars, 

Upward and upward lighter, bid 

The soul on earth frequent the stars : 

When voices whirl those perfumed rings 

God's mighty angels stir their wings. 

A matin and a vesper rite, 

You speak of household light and gloom : 
An old man sadly marks your flight ; 



1 82 Smoke. 

While in the silent close-barred room 
A pastille, smoldering gently, saith 
With scented finger, This is Death. 

Light vanisher 'twixt earth and heaven, 
And sign of cool rest after heat, 

To you the keys of peace are given : 
You're first, you're last a man to greet ! 

You seek, once clear of earthly strife, 

The hush beyond the flame of life. 



ON FORTUNY'S PICTURE OF THE PIPING 
SHEPHERD. 

GONE is Hellas, fane and idol, 
Gone are those symmetric men, 

Wise to bridle 
Luxury with simplest regimen ; 
Yes, her temples are the robber's den. 

Outer Goths and inner Vandals 
Hurled the dainty columns down. 

Art her sandals 
Dusted of the vileness that the town 
Boasted 'mid the symbols of renown. 

But the ocean held its azure 
As when triremes smote the foam, 

Nor could treasure 
Asiatic, in the grasp of Rome, 
That befoul, nor shameful deeds at home. 



184 The Piping Shepherd. 

Horns of tender yeanlings budded, 
Grasses sang and flow Vets blew ; 

Sunshine flooded 
Cape and steep with glory ever true, 
Ruined isles with beauty always new. 

On a time there seized a shepherd 
Thought that caught him like the spring 

Of a leopard, 
Forcing him aside his cloak to fling, 
Pipe a stave, and wondrous wild to sing — 

Not of Athens, nor the splendor 
Of the arts in olden time 

But of tender 
Tasks of love and deeds of manly prime, 
Modern life in many a homely rhyme — 

Sing his joyous lot in breathing 
Winds of ocean, air and earth, 

And of wreathing 
Dance and hymnal to the sunbeam's birth, 
Crowns of ivy to the god of mirth. 



The Piping Shepherd. 185 

As the flocks about him hovered 
One from Spain who loved the old and new 

Him discovered ; 
When again his pipe he blew, 
He with joy the pretty shepherd drew. 

Who was he so gleeful-hearted 
Save Fortuny, man and child, 

Who departed 
Art from out the air and sea beguiled ? 
Art once more on Magna Graecia smiled. 



GOETHE TO THE GERMANS. 

(A. D. 1810.) 

PEACE, peace — no more ! Your jargon dulls my wits. 

What can you do to better your degree? 
Though France be crushed, you'll still be slaves to 
Fritz ; 

If France be strong, through her you may be free. 
But when with cries as senseless as the herd's 

You hound men on to fight against the sun, 

Why, 'tis most like, ere summer be quite done, 
That frosts will fall — with death to singing birds ! 

Farewell. I go to plunge me in the past. 

I can not stop your rant of foolish names 
Like German, Frenchman, Russian, that are cast 

As walls across the pathway of those flames 
Called Science, Letters, Art, from farthest east! 

Your national-nonsense will you then oppose 

To the deep Orient's shaping heat, that glows 
Responsive to the heart of nature's priest ? 



Goethe to the Germans. 187 

Good-bye, good luck ! Rouse me when chang'd your 
theme. 

I like you well, I love our German name, 
But wars despise, quite sure that one good scheme 

For some great drama is far loftier game 
Than thousand plots of kings, race-projects grand, 

Than wiles of chiefs who make men bale their hay. 

When leaders laugh, the peoples always pay. 
For me — the wide world is my Fatherland ! 



DIOGENES ON ALEXANDER. 

O ROYAL dog, O princely fool 

Standing betwixt the sun and me ! 
Because I pray you stand aside 
The sycophants who spoil your rule, 

The tyrants that enslave the free 
And you, great Aristotle's tool, 

Stand gaping there with tushes wide 
Upon this marvel that you see — 
A man with all his wants supplied. 

O royal dog, O princely ass, 

Betwixt me standing and the sun ! 
Had Aristotle so much wit 
He would have given to you a glass 
Wherein are knotty clews undone. 
Perhaps it then had come to pass 

That you my meaning might have hit : 
Your shadow has so bulky grown 
All Greece has got an ague fit. 



YOUNG MEN'S FANCIES. 

(John George's.) 

GIVE me a girl with features small soft round, 
With gentle hair and little flower-like ears ; 
Though few the haughty beauties in her found 
And quick the tears ; 

Yet give me her who is at all points sweet, 
That so, when I in watches of the night 
Waking, perchance a horrid loneness meet, 
A childish fright ; 

When I shall feel that I am all alone, 
The only mortal on a desert globe ; 
Or sinking through the void like meteorstone, 
Or crushed like Job ; 

Then, leaned across the dark bed, I may kiss 

My bonny wife ; what lips at random touch 
Will soft and tender be, no highstrung bliss 
Fierce overmuch ! 



190 Young Mens Fancies. 

Then she will murmur like a child asleep, 

But, her to guard, I shall at once feel strong 
And to her praise shall frame, while slumbers creep, 
A silent song. 



(Adolphus Algernon's.) 

No pretty chits for me ! A woman grand ! 

A daughter of Anak would I had to spouse ! 
A strong-thewed vigorous maiden with a hand 

As broad as long ; a wife that fills my house 
With absolute sway — except where I the master 
Rule, and she yield for fear of worse disaster. 



Fair she may be, but not with even traits 
That hide the natural bias of the mind. 

A strong defect I want that still betrays 

Some fault I love, although in nowise blind. 

I'll have no doll-face lisping, helpless, gentle ! 

Give me a hearty lass, no lady sentimental ! 



Young Mens Fancies. 191 

With such at home, I shall adventure far 
And know, return will find a solid roof ; 

Fierce be our fights, but they will leave no scar 
For, peace being made, we shall not stand aloof ; 

Around her mighty waist my strong arms flinging, 

We'll frankly kiss, fresh love from anger wringing. 

Our children shall be lads of oak, not pale 
White lily-livered chicks with morbid minds, 

Shall run and swim, shall dance and ride and sail, 
Draw strength from earth and valor from the winds. 

Our sons with brain and back shall prove their muscle, 

Our hardy daughters with the world shall tussle. 



SURRENDER. 

THERE lies a bliss just in the lion's jaws 

Ere yet his fangs crush to the very bone, 
The while his dread broad soft unswerving paws 

Rest on a victim without cry or moan, 
But keenly wakeful to his great warm mouth, 
His yellow eyes, lovely, yet void of routh, 
The cloudy mane his awful shoulders wreathing, 
His deep low breathing. 

And there's a hatred for the being, too, 

That drags a wounded life among his kin ; 
An instinct vile the helpless to undo 

And lick the creature dust of those that win. 
As though 'twere needful to be baser yet 
A longing sometimes will the bosom fret, 
While garlands fresh the haughtiest heads are 
crowning 

To drown the drowning. 



Surrender. 193 

There's a strange luxury in being undone 

Crushed flat, brayed fine, wiped out and all de- 
stroyed, 
A mighty joy to meet that glorious one 

Whose power is boundless as the unsounded void, 
To feel a force that plays with you a while, 
Takes your best life's blood for his lawful spoil 
Till, fed superb by you, the careless render 
Stalks on in splendor. 

Have you not felt it, that wild thrill of joy — 
Such joy perchance as the sad Hindoo feels 
When priests drag forth their grim and giant toy 

And o'er his neck crunch the slow turning wheels ? 
Women, ye know what the sweet anguish is 
In being o'erthrown, what though the giver of bliss 
Be god or lion, ah, or manlike demon — 
Speak, O ye women ! 
9 



TRUTH. 

Star of the wise, 
Whose purple splits the evening blue, 

Whom meteor flash, nor stare of moon, 
Nor touch of comet may subdue, 
Last night I read your rune : 
No gold or blue of Paradise, 
Not dazzling heaven itself can screen 
Ithuriel's diamond javelin. 



Old friends, books, chairs, old wine, old shoes 

Are things antipodal to shoddy ; 
They're sweet to love and playfully abuse, 

To laugh or cry with, rollick with or study ; 
Cherish them well, and you'll be sure to lose 

All bunions from your mental body. 



LOOK out and watch the river, 
Look up when stars are kind, 

Look round about you, whether 
'Tis rain, or mist, or wind ; 

But never, never, never 
Look behind ! 



THE COMMONPLACE. 

WHERE, O where's the commonplace 
Whiners tell me still they fly ? 
Wheresoever falls mine eye 

True things have their several grace. 

Split the heart of commonplace 

And there's the Proteus — wriggling lie ! 



BOOZY LITTLE BAT. 

Bat, little bat, 
Up the chimney there what are you at ? 
Now that the Christmas clouds in the sky 
Rattle with snowflakes, warm and dry, 

Wrapped in your soft leather wings, 
Are you hooked up there by the toes, 
Do you doze 

Like Tommy the cat who sings 
By the fender a bass to the kettle? 
See him hang his head over the settle 

All upside down, 

You would think him done brown — 
Yet he's in the finest of fettle ! 

Bat, little bat, 
Wherever you are youVe a brick in your hat, 
Don't deny it ! 



198 Boozy Little Bat. 

How else, winters through 
Cold you hang in a flue 

So quiet, so quiet 
Head downward ? Just answer me that, little bat ! 

Oh, the secret was told me : — 

A gnarl pated goblin (no matter 

What name! small bats mustn't chatter) 

Has blabbed, little bat, 

Of the brick in your hat 
Every autumn — hush, hush now, don't scold me ! 
For he said, On the green 
Where Titania the queen 

Of fairy -land held harvest revel 
You were seen 

After dawn 

When the fairies were gone 
Fie ! drinking the dregs of the nectar potheen ! 

Oh, oh, who'd have thought 

You, batlet, a sot 
Who dwell on so lofty a level ! 
Tehee, little bat, 
So we find it is that 



Boozy Little Bat. 199 

Makes you snooze without care 
With your heels in the air 

Though the draught be tremendous and ever so 
hot! 

But it's never too late, 

Next year when you mate 
And your children are fledge, 

Come down to our fire 

Small brown-coated friar 
And sign, like a good Father Matthew, 
The temperance pledge. 



THE SEA SPRITE. 

NUDE as Adam rose from earth, 
Bare as when you wept at birth, 
Where the sand is wet and red 
Near the edge of leagues of reeds, 
Slumberous pools and trackless meads — 
When with hands youVe scooped a bed, 
East and seaward lay your head. 

Hidden there all breathless lie 
While the sunbeams quit the sky, 
Whilst above the cloudy west 
Lingers still a virgin moon 
Like the plume within the crest 
Of a god who passeth soon. 

If there be no mortal by, 
Nor the mighty hush be broken 
Save by gentle ring-neck's cry 
Wailing with a grief unspoken, 



The Sea Sprite. 201 

Or by heron, booming harsh 
From the vast and landward marsh. 

If you fix a steadfast face 

On the zenith's awful space 

And your forehead seaward strain 

Till the eyeballs rolling back 

Trace the red sun's former track, 

Till they catch at last the main 

And the place whence daylight sprung — 

Then look sharply through the gloaming 

Past the broken swell and foaming, 

Sharp the coming waves among. 

Where the highest in its pride 
Stalks with monster majesty 
Is it magic that you see ? 
On the green and glassy curve 
Whom do deadly breakers serve 
As elephants for sport to ride ? 

Tis the sea sprite. You have found 
Where he tumbles at his play, 
And with eyes below the ground 
Ere the falling of the spray 



202 The Sea Sprite. 

You can peer the wave-tops under, 
You can view the ocean's wonder 
Ere he dips and slips away : — 
Careless madcap, seabeach-shaker 
Quick to back another breaker, 
Thus he sports till break of day. 

Yet beware, one word but cry — 
There's your grave dug where you lie ! 



LITTLE PEOPLE. 

I STOLE so gently on their dance, 
Their pygmy dance in red sunrise, 

I caught the warm and tender glance 
Each gallant gave his dear one's eyes. 

Wee ladies clad in fine bat's-wing 

With plumed lordlings stamp the heel ; 

Behind them swords and fans they fling 
And foot it blithely down the reel. 

They sighed and ogled, whispered, kissed 
In meetings of the swaying dance — 

Then fled not, but were swiftly missed, 
Like love from out a well-known glance. 

I sprang: the flashing swords were grown 
Mere blossom-stalks from tulips tossed; 

The fans that sparkled on the stone 

Were turned to sprays of glittering frost. 



FAIRY LOGIC. 

Near a stone 

Thickly strewn 
Nestle mushrooms cool and lowly. 

Ask the dew 

How they grew 
While the owl was mousing slowly. 

Frank they gaze 

Through the haze 
Their rooflets rearing o'er the lea, 

Small but wise 

By gay sunrise 
Off the high land, down the sea. 

People say 

Fairies play 
O'er these breezy uplands nightly. 

Is it fable 

That each table 
Marks the place of banquet sprightly? 



Fairy Logic. 205 

Come ! would you 

Prove it true, 
Up, and ere the dawn be roaming ; 

Them in haste 

Break and taste 
Soon as fairies quit the gloaming. 

You can tell 

By their smell 
And their nutty smack of good land, 

You will guess 

The essences 
Found in marshes, moor or woodland ; 

You will know 

Hills are so 
Round and fresh and full of savor ; 

You shall say, 

" Be what may 
Only fairies lent this flavor ! " 



WEEPING WILLOWS. 

I HATE a willow, — see it stand 
Half in water, half on land 
And its leaves the river sweeping 
Tell of women ever weeping. 
In the lowest of the valley 
Where with fog the air is thickest 
Evil spirits thither rally, 
Poisons there infect the quickest, 
And the tree that veils their nimble 
Goblin-dances bears a symbol 
In each earthward drooping limb 
Yearning toward the waters dim. 

Let no willow quickly grow ! 
If nor man, nor thunder-lighting 
Shall be ready for its blighting, 
Prune it close and guide it slow. 
Better feed your kine with thistles 
Than allow your children whistles 



Weeping Willows. 207 

From the accursed wood to shape. 
Through the hollow bark escape 
Subtle humors miasmatic 
That within the youthful brain 
May engender thoughts erratic, 
Longings, helplessness and pain. 

But if you must ask the reason 
Why the willow broodeth treason, 
Why the vampire dim may skulk 
In and out its spongy bulk — 

You have forgot, I know, how the poor suicide 
Snatched at its brittle boughs, and cursed it e'er he 
died. 



SELF MEASUREMENT. 

No grimace, 

Take your place, 
Into the ranks with you ! 

Little brains 

Bear no strains, 
Play nasty pranks with you. 

Just resolve 

To dissolve 
Your one crumb of salt, 

Slowly rub 

In the tub 
Your one spoon of malt. 

Bow your head, 

You are weighed 
No weightier than the next 

No grimace ! 

Take your place 
Who cares, though you be vexed ? 



LIFE'S EPILOGUE. 

O WRAP me in such yellow webs of silk 

As swathe few months the painted midnight fly 

And smiling lay me in the clean cool ground, 

Nor let the sound 
Of screw or hammer vex me when I die. 

Press the sweet soil upon my weary lids 
And cool my lips with slowly trickling drops 
And, if so be, let great roots lap my frame 

And pour my fame 
Through harps Eolean of the wind-swung tops. 

For thus I lie upon the grassy slope 

And thus I crush my mouth into the mold 

And this I mean : when I have reached the bourn 

Glad will I turn 
To this dear earth which my two arms enfold. 



2io Lifes Epilogue. 

Then shape no lead 'gainst natural corruption 

But lay me so, for Indians of the plain 

Raise high their chiefs no more ; nor may I view 

From dead-cave of Peru, 
Shriveled, the sun set o'er the vasty main. 

There are who flit from here without a pang. 

Men lived, who drained all wholesome joys of earth 

And yet went hence without a groan or tear, 

No mournful bier 
Made sad true hearts not yet beyond all mirth. 

We live too much within our neighbor's brains ; 
Throng, but to fight ; we drop good, hunt for crimes 
Because our fellows seem to bid us — Fool ! 

Why play the tool 
To that ordain'd as you say by the times ? 

Men reck not you. Their own strings goad them on. 
Choose your fit work and labor while you may, 
So later years may haply bear a fruit 

From a strong root 
And buy a grateful fame ere you have passed 
away. 



INDIAN CLOVE. 



THE VISION OF INDIAN CLOVE. 

STILL, it smiled, this lonely land 

Full of valleys set about 

Low with crags that frowned in play 

When the spray 
From a raincloud their dark faces tanned ; 
Here dwelt joy without a doubt, 

Rest and peace ; 
'Twas the spot from march to cease, 
Pitch a camp and stretch the worn feet out. 
Here had never farmer's fence 
Scored the bottoms ; nothing save 
Some chance birch bark, years gone by, 

Raised a wave 
On the lakes that southward lie. 
For the keen cut settler-sense 
Took the left stream, took the right, 
Filled the main vales with the might 
Of the township, of the city dense — 
All unwitting gave this range go by. 



214 Indian Clove. 

It was strange 
Such a silence reigned throughout 
All the region ! On each woodcliff range, 
On the meadows, all the swamps about 
Sang no bird, nor whistled any lark ; 

Nor was heard the bark 
Petulant of squirrels, nor the sad 
Wail of hawk afar off; jeweled wings 
Flashed no day-fly, nor in giddy rings 
Whirled the insects that in ponds are glad. 

So I thought : Meseems they hold their breath 
Reverently, and watch far down the west 
How, his agony in clouds confessed, 
Lord of day is sadly done to death. 
'Tis some magic, so they dumbly feel, 
Foul and hidden, and to holes they steal 
Fearful lest their god, this evening slain, 

Come no more again. 
So the evening wore into the night ; 

But no bright 
Flies of fire o'er their rushy bed 
Lit the lowlands ; neither overhead 
Star did flare, nor shoot a passing gleam, 
Nor boom'd once a bittern from the stream. 



Indian Clove. 215 

Yet full soon are wrapped in leaden sleep 
Way-worn pilgrims who have traveled far, 
Though gray fear about their foreheads creep, 
Though their heartbeats hands of coldness mar. 
So the weights, that ever finely small 
Added are each other to, were laid 
On mine eyelids till a hueless pall 
Hid the earth in one impartial shade. 



Then within the middle night 

I sat upright. 
Did one call ? Did some wild beast 
Break the silence that was domed 
Bell-like over all from west to east — 
That was tense, like metal, till the least 
Cry re-echoed as the creature roamed ? 
No, some Thing that saw sans eyes 

Bade me rise ; 
That was tongueless, touching without hand, 

Gave command 
Through enthralment of my will : 
I arose, and set my face right tow'rd the hill. 



216 Indian Clove. 

It was steep — where splinters from the cliff 
Clogg'd the long base with treacherous moving 

stone. 
It was sheer — where the gnarl'd pine alone 
Grappled for life with a grip past belief. 
But o'er the waste and up the laddering fir 
Tireless I climb'd to that hill's granite edge 
And reached thin grass, and passed a thorny 

hedge 
Into a wood. 

Oh then there came a stir 
That stirred my hair at root ! The leaves were 

light 
On every tree, because a small foul worm 
Had eat of each leaf half ; a shivering fright 
Rose from the limbs that never ceased to squirm ; 
But underneath, upon the empested ground 

No plant was found, 
No summer bloom, no green sprout of a tree, 
Nor aught but that great livid growth 
Of rankest shade which all things loathe 
Except the blowfly ; he can never flee 
Its fetid breath but, being lured, must die ; 



Indian Clove. 217 

That, and the fungus on the trunk 

Which deep had drunk 
Of deadly gas, of juices, till its dry 
Tough veins were flaccid, soft and fresh 

Like brittle flesh ; — 
These, and the Deadman's Pipe 

Which there stood ripe 
Were all that lived beneath that creeping sound. 

But I spake brave : However murk the ground 
Or dank or foul, the wilderness is clean 
Where'er of man no heinous deed has been ! 
And so press'd onward, quaking, thro' the wood ; 

Then, sudden, stood 
At sight of four wheels rotting on the soil 
While, grimly sketched in fantasm outline dim, 
Ghastly, a mere poor flatness with a rim, 
Lay beasts of burden fallen at their toil ! 

With that, what horrors seize 

My trembling knees! 

What nameless dread 
Twists the wide eyeballs starting from the head 
While through the wood towers a shape of fear ! 



2i8 Indian Clove. 

What is it grows ? What is it fills the brim 

Of yon deep pool from whose black borders sheer 

Rise the light trunks? What gleams through 

every limb, 
Through ragged tops of deeply plunging trees 
Off there, down there ? No fitful, eddying breeze 
Could bellows up and out those heavy coils 
Of yeasty cloud in such unholy calm ! 
Yet now the wide Clove like a cauldron boils, 
Now bloweth hugely smooth, as when a charm 
Bids giant mushroom grow ; and next it lilts 
In steady circle round the valley's rim 
While patterns vaguely woven out of steam 
Indent the tent-like marvel as it tilts. 
Nor do these rest ; but evermore they swirl 
In milky spirals, now like serpents curl 
In, out, around, till each slow-modeling form 
About, about, wheels in a still, wide storm. 

Like him, who, standing on a whirlwind's brink 

Can only think 
Of flight or hiding ; yet like him, alas, 
Who stares upon a jaguar in the grass 
And see'th death, but can not break the spell 

Nor rightly tell 



Indian Clove. 219 

Why every limb is lame ; so on that night 
Of awful journey I might never 'scape 
The threatening storm but always I must gape 
And, numb with fear, wait for the farther sight. 

Then slower sped that vast revolving cloud 
And, clearer cut, ran into solid groups 
The nebulous pictures, till a panic crowd 
Of children, boys, of women in wild troops, 
Rushed madly hither, thither. Nearer lay 
Strong men in death, their foreheads lately gashed 
By hatchet hurtled, or their bosoms flashed 
Quite through by whining lead. All pale were 

they 
With features dumbly writhen. Gestures wild 
Were there of frantic women : some would save 
Beneath full breasts a new-born tender child 
And some with arms a boy ; some did but rave 
And curse the foe. 

But that foe whirled around 
The fenceless prey as dun wolves gaunt and 

grim 
Will bait a buffalo : in every limb 
Stick fast their fangs till on the slippery ground 



220 Indian Clove. 

He sinks unnerved ; then echoes all the land 
To senseless howlings of the hideous band. 

Or was it sound, or did the harass'd sense 

Of sight invent the far-off groan and cry, 

The horrid whoop, the crash when some brain's 

fence 
Was beaten down, each moaning, shout or sigh 
That slowly rose and shook a distant knell 
Down, down the years like some fog-muffled bell ? 

Too real, too true 
Came the sad clamor of the hapless few ! 

The fight was won, the pallid were o'erthrown, 
The dusky swarm, as numberless as leaves 
In middle year, were now all frantic grown 
With victory. As reapers gather sheaves 
So rioted among fair-braided slaves 
The swarthy arms of particolored braves. 
Then hardy muscles sharpened keen to lust 
Throbb'd fiercely round some little piteous maid 
Whose tender arms, rebelling, from her thrust 
The foe's vile nakedness, but next, afraid, 



Indian Clove. 221 

She'd hide her face and droop upon the ground. 
But of the slaves some few strong souls were 

found 
Who, heart-strung by despair, while off their 

guard 
The savage warriors turn from death to love, 
Caught each a weapon and struck one blow, hard 
And slew one man, and thus were glad enough 
To sell their lives and earn the last reward. 

But I, who with them died 

A thousand deaths 
And with wild virgins groan'd and sigh'd, 
Moaning at each new massacre of breaths, 

I stood all stone, 
All helpless to assist them save by prayer, 
By curse rebounding on the stagnant air, 

By wild threat thrown 
Like his who raves within his own 
Sad land of madness, where the spectres gibe 
Forever at the maniac's diatribe ! 
Yet when the ebb, the folly of despair 
Had cast me headlong on the rotting leaves 
To hide the eyes from what no heart could bear, 
Yet could I not refrain. There come reprieves 



222 Indian Clove. 

To bitterest anguish. Was it wise and brave 
To turn the face from horrors, first to rave 
And then to fly ? I hastened to my feet. 

What now was here, what changes fleet 
Had swept the scene — pursuers, the pursued? 
Do wolves turned lambs the victims thus entreat, 
Do gentle souls refuse a mercy sued ? 
The forms are like, but every thin-flanked brave 
Is full in flight or cowering like a girl 
While on his track, or o'er him swiftly whirl 
Pale shapes of fright like ghouls that haunt the grave. 
Oh, blooming arms I saw that ruffians tore 
From tender breasts aside ! and writhen necks 
Abhorring him who touched ! ah, piteous sex 
That suffered shame, ye are the prey no more ! 

No, horrible with stare 
From wide white eyes and mouths in cruel square. 

With bloody dabbled cheeks 
Those victim-wraiths with heart-benumbing shrieks 
Upon the spoilers leap. No stoic mood, 
No savage pride could brook that horrid scene, 
But horror-struck the victors fain would screen 
Their haggard eyes from the remorseless brood, 



Indian Clove. 223 

Would gladly hide 
Like boys their warlike crests, would creep to holes. 
Or plunge in lakes, or follow fast a guide 
Who knew the trail to save their abject souls. 



But there is none. The cruel woman-hand 
Is at their necks ; upon each shaven head, 
On flesh of bronze they feel those tresses shed 
Drops of deep-riving flame ; like acids brand 
The cold blue lips, and when an arm is laid 
About a man by ghastly simpering maid 
He writhes, a panther that a serpent grasps, — 
He screams, a child that a dim vampire clasps! 

Yet how in words to tell 
The foolish pity that thereon befell 
At sight of firm souls crumpled like dry leaves 
Beneath a fear ? at view of frenzied eyes 
That awful terror of their pride bereft ? 
To mark how, every moment, worse than dies 
The grizzled chief who for his pastime cleft 
The skulls of boys, and note the coward wail 
Of braves once scornful of the leaden hail! 



224 Indian Clove. 

Why should it irk, why should it seem 

Aught else but sweet that sufferers now redeem 

With torture just the crimes and monster wrong 

That they have borne ? for unto them belong 

Delicious vengeances, since now the stream 

Has set their way. And so in one mad ring 

The warriors fly ; but lift in vain high knees 

While at their shoulders livid women wing 

A noiseless way and palsy-handed seize 

On high warcrest or with keen filed teeth 

Touch the bare necks of foes until they shriek with 

fear ; 
But not one face that followeth hath a tear 
Nor other thing each cruel eyeball see'th 
Save that poor wretch alone who quaketh so 
In flight before it round the circle slow. 

Yet now behold them haste ! 

Faster the whole mass moves, 
Quicker, more quick, upon the pathway traced 
Within the circuit of three hanging hills ! 
Now scarcely full the whole deep Clove it fills 

And soon in former grooves 
Rides the wide dome of cloud, while all entwined 



Indian Clove. 225 

Are shapes of flight and following. Swift, more 

swift 
On bellying tent the twisted figures shift 
To spiral waves on milky whiteness lined. 
A red light grows athwart the mighty sphere 

That itself ever drinks 

And slowly shrinks 
With lessening borders, drifting from the grove. 
But now the whirl is shot with rose from dun, 
Now lit with sharp hues such as greet the sun 
From Arctic ice-hills when the long night is done; 
And now, compacted to a color clear, 

Calm, broad and near, 
Only the moon, blood-red, stands over Indian Clove. 



THE SEER. 



THE SEER. 

History is never written. At the best 
A fragmentary truth is half confessed 
And quick denial follows. Who in books 
Of serious learning for real wisdom looks 
Hunts clouds in rivers and as well may seize 
The sunshine as it gallops o'er the leas. 

In eighteen hundred ten an Indian seer 

Still dwelt upon Manhattan. It was here 

He lived and died in fame most savory 

Of virtue, healing power and sorcery. 

And here he sang to trusty friends whose skin 

Showed white albeit the heart was red within 

The lays of old Manhattan. Handed down 

From sire to son of magical renown — 

Whose cunning words and actions stranger still 

Around the crowded wigwam sent a thrill, 



230 The Seer. 

Fired every heart and set the moccasin stamping 
In furtive memory of the warpath's tramping, — 
These songs at last, for shame of boors who scoffed 
Crept out of sight within the mental loft, 
Mind's garret of a white man. 

Rescued thence 
And gently altered to a clearer sense, 
Behold the runes of ancient Greenland's fall, 
The red man's flight, dispersion ; last of all 
The words prophetic uttered by that seer 
Against the blatant race which lords it here. 



Old was the chief, no Indian knew how old 
And yet he stood erect, as calm and bold 
As men of thirty. Often by the hill 
That scanned Manhattan then and scans it still 
Beyond the brackish tideways, on the bank 
Of lakelike Hudson he his camp-stones sank. 
It there befell that friends by nights of wind 
And cloudy wrack were wont to bend his mind 
On days of old, and stir his wit with fears 
Of goblins, or the woodhag who appears 
All flame inside her skull. 



The Seer. 231 

On such a night 
While huddling round the fire in panic fright, 
When even the dogs in sympathy would moan, 
Thus he his chant barbaric would intone : 



The Raid on Greenland. 

Mad wind ! mad wind off the sea ! 
Tons of clouds before it flee. 



Gray wolves ! gray wolves overhead ! 
Hudson writhes within her bed. 

Black, black the Palisades ! 
Fir-trees bow like willow blades. 



See the cloud-forms northward flying, 
Hurrying by without replying ! 

All the Indian clans are there : 
Elk and beaver, turtle, bear, 



232 The Seer. 

Wolf and panther, moose and snakes, 
North and west they whirl, as flakes 

Foam along a mountain steep 

When the spring-floods downward sweep. 

Terror pricks them, and despair 
Hounds them through the murky air ; 

Front they have not heart to show 
When the dreadful east winds blow. 

Listen, paleface, you shall learn 
Why the Indians feebly turn 

On the white man. 'Tis in vain 
War shall burn and burn again : 

Hear our nation's annals old, 
What the seers, my fathers, told ! 



Six lives of a crow have passed 
(Thrice will crows a man outlast) 



The Seer. 233 

Since in old and glorious days 
Red men swept the eastern bays. 

Indian warriors ! hearts of bison ! 
Deft with arrows shod with poison ; 

Spears of copper, axe of flint, 
Shield that laughs at hatchet's dint ! 

Tree-canoes of giant girth, 

Camp-fires holding, stones, and earth — 

Skins for sails and paddles great 
Forest fashioned for their state — 

Bore our chieftains far and wide 
Lifting o'er the ocean's tide. 

Far to eastward they had seen 
Towns of white men, regions green ; 

Ha, they joyed not, till their hands 
Ravaged all those sunrise lands ! 



234 The Seer. 

Sungod's offspring was our leader, 
Chief of all, our father, feeder. 

Eyes of eagle, never bleared ! 
King-canoe ahead he steered. 

North star led him. On we sailed, 
Eastward till our courage failed. 

Icehills froze us ; mermen splashed ; 
Sword-fish on our counters dashed ; 

Child of sungod never spoke : 
Held us to our galling yoke, 

Till we heard on Greenland's shore 
Through the fog the breakers roar. 

Night-time, night-time is the season 
Pale men drink away their reason. 

Night was round us. O'er the town 
Like red clouds we hovered down, 



The Seer. 235 

Hacking, stabbing, shooting, felling 
Squaw, pappoose within their dwelling. 

Burnt the stone-huts ; those we found 
Living in the embers bound ; 

Danced the wardance and with spoil 
Homeward bent us to our toil. 

Coast of Greenland, full of smoke, 
Empty, black, forlorn awoke : 

Towns in ruins, bodies gashed, 
Children into pieces dashed, 

Seacraft scuttled, cattle dead, 
Naught alive our spears had fled ; 

Songs we shouted day by day 
Till we made Manhattan Bay. 



236 The Seer. 



The Fate of the Indian. 

Wise the future to forgather 
Magic knew my early father. 

Cried he on the sungod's child 
Who the nation had beguiled : 

Sunchief, sunchief, you have broke 
Faith and braved the white man's yoke ; 

As wood-devils clutch the backs 
Of the deer within their tracks 

For the crime of you and these 
Curses on your race shall seize! 

White men from the rising sun, 
White ships o'er the sea shall run, 

Thunder holding, lightning spitting, 
Oaken shields as eggshells splitting, 



The Seer. 237 

Bringing poisons, fearful beasts, 
Wasting all our corn in feasts ! 

Wizards are the blue-eyed race ; 
Them the airgod holds in grace ; 

Lends them wings ; the thunderstone 
Trusteth in their hands alone. 

Once the air-snake gulped the sun. 
So to death shall ye be done 

Sunchiefs, by those men who are 
Favored of the stormy star ! 

Manitou has sung me all, — 
Theirs the victory, ours the fall ! 

Angry waxed the sunchild then, 
Full of terrors vague, his men. 

Prophet, prophet, stay your curses ! 
Cowardice your magic nurses. 



238 The Seer. 

Greater is the sungod far 
Than the might of any star. 

Clouds may hide his glorious face, 
Yet they fade in little space. 

Heavenly dragons that devour him 
Only seem to overpower him. 

Let the wrathful wizards come, 
Never shall they see their home. 

Cowards are they, babies, women ! 
Stonehuts are not built by free men. 

Warriors ? Do they scream in death 
When the hatchet cuts their breath ? 

How can cowards drive us hence ? 
Are they worse than pestilence? 

Are they worse than skulking red men, 
Ay, than restless ghosts of dead men ? 



The Seer. 239 

Scalps — behold them ! Guards be they 
From the sprites of those we slay ; 

Holding these, we need not fear 
Though their bloody wraiths appear. 

Indian towns when guarded well 
Never yet to stranger fell. 

But if sloth shall seal our eyes 
Foemen may the land surprise. 

Why then wait we ? Past the hills 
Grow the trees that cure our ills. 

Warriors, if ye tremble, follow 
Northward through the river's hollow; 

Westward I, the child of sun, 
Lead you till our lives are done; 

Waters mightier, forests vast, 
Full of game we'll meet at last 



240 The Seer. 

So may white men vengeance minded, 
By the desolate seacoast blinded, 

Deem us vanished, and so daunted 
At our rivers spirit-haunted 

Back may get them to their home 
While through sunset-lands we roam. 

Warriors, let us quit the sea, 
Westward, westward march with me ! 



The Dispersion of the Nation. 

Mad wind ! mad wind off the sea ! 
Indian nations, trembling, flee — 

Gray wolves ! gray wolves overhead ! 
Northward by old Hudson's bed. 

Where the Mohawk cuts her banks, 
One tribe dropped from out the ranks. 



The Seer. 241 

Burning war canoes that brave 
Ocean's salt and giant wave, 

Then the sun-chiefs mighty band 
Westward bore across the land. 

Next, another thee preferred, 
Blue Oneida, deep, unstirred ! 

Onondagas held the mountains, 

Moors and forests, springs and fountains, 

By Cayuga's blooming shore 
Pitched their lodges one tribe more. 

When, like moon above the earth 
Peeped the lake of ocean's girth, 

When the sweet sea burst in view, 
Mighty Senecas withdrew. 



Where a boiling water runs 

Toward the land of six-moon suns, 
11 



242 The Seer. 

And a whole sea from the rock 
Tumbles sheer with awful shock — 

Tuscaroras, Alleghanies ! 
Settled in your town each clan is. 

At the last the remnant stood 
Where the Father of Waters' flood 

Splits the east land from the west. 
There upon the chief's behest 

Bridge o'er yellow waves they cast ;- 
When it broke, the half were past. 

Shawnees, Cherokees to eastward. 
The Dakotas to the westward. 

Thus the Indians dwelt, the day 
White men found Manhattan Bay. 

Hear me ! I have told you why 
Indians fear the white man's eye. 



The Seer. 243 



The Fate of the White. 

Mad wind ! mad wind off the sea ! 
Tons of cloud before it flee. 

Gray wolves ! gray wolves overhead ! 
Hudson writhes within her bed. 

Black, black the Palisades ! 
Fir-trees bow like willow blades. 

White men, white men, by this token 
Ye shall fly with panic broken. 

Six crow's ages shall have passed 
(Thrice will crows a man outlast) 

White race in its turn shall blunder, 
Sailing eastward, burn and plunder ; 

Sailing westward, it shall know 
Vengeance from a mightier foe. 



244 2^* Seer. 

Proud with riches, strength and wit, 
Whites will never quiet sit 

Till a foeman now unknown, 
Silently to manhood grown, 

Whelm the boasters with a tide 
Half of blood and blackness dyed. 

See the gray ghosts in the cloud : 
White men in their burial shroud ! 

Watch the terror, watch the anguish. 
Children weep and women languish. 

Boast your magic ; live your day 
Indians, white men pass away. 



THE TWO GIANTS. 



THE TWO GIANTS. 

1876. 

Lapped within two mighty seas, 

Washed by stream and dried with breeze, 

Throbbing with mysterious motions 

Of the airs and of the oceans, 

Lie two giants, man and woman, 

Continental, superhuman ; 

They have read in waking dreams 

By flashes vast of starry beams 

One day more on rolling spheres 

Where mortals spell a hundred years. 

First the dauntless Genovese 
Stirred them from a slumberous ease. 
Next day with the Puritan 
Through the mangod vigor ran. 



248 The Two Giants 

Celt and Frank and Cavalier 
Gave him hope and liberal cheer ; 
Still a day, whose close we bless, — 
And giant and dark giantess 
Willed their sinewy backs be free 
And burst the gyves of tyranny. 

On this fourth day's glorious eve 

They must freedom full achieve 

From pupilage, a tyrant's name, 

Faults that even giants lame, 

Ignorance and greed of pelf, 

Overweening pride of self, 

Lust of conquest, luxuries, 

All ignoble slaveries, — 

Ready so, with open grace, 

To look the wide world in the face. 

By deathless camp-fires of the sun 
Round about the earth that run 
Half-reclining, vast they lie 
Separate beneath the sky. 
Warm are knees and mighty thighs, 
Cool their bodies huge in size ; 



The Two Giants. 249 

Winds of autumn gently fan 
Breasts of woman and of man ; 
While their foreheads clear and cold 
Well to north and southward hold. 



I. 



Close against the line of light 
Where are even day and night 
In her skirt of forests sweet 
She has curled her languid feet. 
Flash with white and yellow ore 
Dimpled knees in Ecquador, 
While her mighty virgin zone 
Lies along the Amazon. 
There she rests, her dreamy eyes 
Lit with scorn and fierce surprise 
When she feels the restless blaze 
Of the northern giant's gaze ; 
Will not note his glances bold 
But, coucht soft in careless fold 
Of her silk-bark kirtle, white 
'Gainst her eyes of blue midnight, 



250 The Two Giants. 

Her musky side supporting still 
On the mountains of Brazil 
And breathing spices soporific 
Blown across the South Pacific, 
Ponders on the fading gray- 
Westward over Chiloe. 

She would sound the happy past ; 
Future's smile she will not see. 
Careless, tawny hands are cast 
Up behind the symmetry 
Of her dark head throned in state 
O'er the land of River Plate ; 
Spread her locks along the strand 
Of dripping pines in Fireland 
While the soft-wing'd memories stir 
Through that antique mind of her. 

She has been a glorious queen ; 
Wars and empires she has seen 
Drop like plummets loosed from line 
Into space without confine. 
With her old force ever young 
She would resurrect her dead 
Hear what bard or Inca sung, 



The Two Giants. 251 

Ask them why they all are fled ; 
Runes in knotted cords unravel, 
Lichen-eaten sculptures read, 
Sift the secret-heaping gravel 
Where her marvelous rivers speed ; 
Con the lore of eldest East, 
The meanings lost of mystic feast, 
And seek a clew to all the haste 
Pulsing faster from the West ; 
Summon up the shades of old, 
Monarchs and her champions bold ; 
Rend their graves and cry to them 
Westward march of men to stem. 
She to savage war would harden 
Myriad hands on fertile plain; 
She would marshal once again 
The tillers of her tropic garden 
So to guard untouched her honor 
From the giant gazing on her. 

II. 

From his eyes of glittering lakes 
He the mist of morning shakes ; 



252 The Two Giants. 

From the white gates of the dawn 
Now his watchful gaze is drawn. 
Filled with new-grown energy- 
Born beyond the eastern sea 
And with knotted muscles swelling 
With the fresh life in him welling, 
He, his awful head upreared, 
Plants his fist below his beard 
While a thought serene and tender 
Mingles with his blue eye's splendor 
And his forehead white with snows 
Ruddy with his passion grows. 

Southward fall his glances quick 
As a cloud of javelins thick, 
And his restless spirit trembles 
Toward the woman, who dissembles, 
Conscious that the spell which flows 
From her seeming-deep repose 
Fiery though his being goes. 
Small his skill to play a part ; 
Yet his veins, replete with longing, 
Fill the caverns of his heart, 
Till the organ tones come thronging 



The Two Giants. 253 

So enormous deep and slow- 
That mortals fancy north winds blow : — 

III. 

" Virgin of the eldest eld, 
Young, mysteriously fair, 
Long enough have you withheld 
Kiss of bridegroom from your hair. 
Not as oft before do I 
Rudely grasp that sacred zone 
But with chaste sobriety 
Come to plead with love alone. 
While your slumber of despair 
Scarce by islander was broke 
And to keener life you were 
Scarce by Asian seer awoke, 
While the planets sang in choir 
How the great through toil aspire 
My strong spirit left our fire. 

" Marched with myriad, slaying men 
My quick soul on Asian plain, 
India and the Ukraine harried, 
Vigor new to Syria carried, 



254 The Two Giants. 

Russia swept and laid in Greece 
Beauty's seed to bloom in peace. 
My soul Kymric battles won ; 
I was burned in Babylon ; 
Blasting culture, forced in turn 
Culture from the wreck to learn, 
I in legions of old Rome 
Served, and overthrew my home. 
Of victory the thousand ills, 
Crime and famine, pestilence, 
War that slays and peace that kills., 
Glut of pride and brutish sense 
Still defeated and oppressed me 
Till upon our pristine hearth 
After circuit of the earth 
Now my soul has repossessed me. 



" Virgin of the spirit shy, 
You that like the llama fly 
Lovely eyed still higher, higher 
To the sharp crags of your ire, 
You must learn your hates to rhyme 
With this renovating time. 



The Two Giants. 255 

Have you asked yourself the meaning 

Of your body's northward leaning ? 

Winds and secret currents bear 

My blood southward toward your feet ; 

Do you drop no hidden tear 

For the one you long to meet 

Who should rouse you from your dream, 

Read for you the future clear, 

Tell what is and what doth seem 

What is far and what is near — 

Who should make your languid veins 

Thrill with better life and new, 

Lead you queen in mutual chains 

Of the wise, the good, the true ? 



" Virgin of the mighty past 
T, of modern things the last, 
Love you with a constant passion 
Such as northlands only fashion. 
I the north adore the south ; 
Heart to heart and mouth to mouth 
Each shall be an equal lover, 
Each the other's weakness cover ! 



256 The Two Giants. 

Do not scorn the restless West, 
Ponder well my bold request ; 
Here I cite you, dreamy East, 
To our joyful wedding feast ! 
Virgin great, no longer fly me, 
But in honor trust and try me ! " 

IV. 

Thus the giant, half upreared, 
Utters through his curling beard 
Sounds so wavewide to that woman 
That they pass the senses human ; 
Only here and there a word 
On mountain-tops by prophets heard 
Brings the mortal's heart to mouth 
With love for all the glorious South ; 
Leaping down, he pipes again 
Peace and brotherhood to men. 

But the brooding ocean's daughter 
Answers him not who besought her, 
Yet she listens while the rays 
Of his eyes like sunshafts blaze 



The Two Giants. 257 

Into hers. She does not mock 
When their glances interlock. 
Even as when day is done 
Moon still sees the face of sun 
Shine her eyes with luring light, 
Torches toward the bridal night. 
Love so earnest well may guess 
In the no a lurking yes. 
Smiles can quench the rising sneer ; 
Lo, she quakes — the time is near 
For dreamy East and martial West 
To sink upon each other's breast. 



HESPERUS. 



HESPERUS. 

Do ye perceive, shapes of the western skies, 
Apart from joy such as to life belongs, 
Know ye, O maryelous fabrics, when the eyes 
Of mortals watch ye, how their ears yearn for songs ? 

Slow-chanted poems, changing in form and hue, 
Are ye aware of wide symphonic moves 
Among your star-crowned pinnacles ? and you, 
Ye sea-foam strips at mid-day — gullies, grooves, 

Fantastic turrets, bastions and holy fanes, 
Cities scarce built when ruined, do ye reckon 
How to the heart of man your mysteries beckon, 
What of your glories in man's soul remains ? 

Or is this sky a dome of polished blue, 
A crystal-pillared chapel on whose walls 
Some humorous mighty power doth still endue 
A pageant-travesty of all that crawls 



262 Hesperus. 

About the earth-crust ? From the infant's crow, 
From laughter of a little red-cheeked boy 
To shocks of armies and the overthrow 
Of century-mortised cities ; from the joy 

Of still-voiced grasses to the angry blare 
Of hurricanes and earthquakes, — each great text, 
Plain to high souls whom envy never vexed, — 
Folly, crime, love and wisdom, all are there. 



Then, how that boundless vast artificer 
Must love to shift his scenes from dawn to dawn ; 
To breathe in curves exquisite, subtly drawn, 
With delicate tints and angels' pinion-stir, 

Some hint of earthly happiness or woe ! 
Perchance a bridal or a funeral train 
Or thoughts that scud across a maddened brain 
When hope looks true and all the pulses glow ; 

Perchance unsounded problems of the world, 
A law, a truth, a virtue elemental, 
A hieroglyphic close-wrapped, transcendental, 
Never by man's dull wit to be unfurled ! 



Hesperus. 263 

From off this sheer and skyward promontory 
I see a bay where meet the converg'd lines 
Of Western traffic and behold the glory 
That from a nation in yon city shines. 

Still, there be promptings, secret calls that turn 
Westward my face, though the night's end may glow 
Fair with false sunrise, high though the mid-sun burn, 
Though evening's gale the sunset caldron blow : 

Why in that core flamboyant must I gaze 
Longing to march westward, ah, far away ? 
Why do our souls, seeking a cloud-Cathay, 
Run toward the sun along those glittering ways ? 



Say we are waves, urged by a devious current 
Obedient to mysterious laws of mass, 
Never for all our boasts to be aberrant 
From the vast Plan through which all comes to pass. 

Or, being plants fed with a quicker sap 
That faster move than brethren of the meadow, 
Do we lean after, out of night's dark lap, 
Afraid to brave the round earth's starlit shadow? 

Or are we poured like Norway's living flood ? — 
O'er crag and lake the myriad-breeding lemming 



264 Hesperus. 

Moves with an instinct that will bear no stemming 
Till the Atlantic drowns the prodigious brood. 



Once did the West contain those blessed islands 
The ancients fabled? The red Indians know 
Moored in the evening sky, their happy highlands 
Where the pale foeman flies the exultant bow. 

Perhaps our home was once a golden region 
Long sunk beneath the sinister gray sea, 
And that is why a world-wide dim religion 
Motions men on to where that land may be ; 

Perhaps beneath the treacherous Atlantic 
It slumbers now, while through the oozy ways 
The starfish creeps ; in palaces gigantic 
House mighty sharks and human-visaged rays. 



Or is it memory? If from twilight ages 
Our ancestors have westward, westward marched, 
Broken through all, fought, and by deadly stages 
Mastered seas, sands, wind-rent, by deserts parched, 

Then may they, many a time, in separate aeons, 



Hesperus. 265 

Have stood just here, noting with savage gladness 
In blood-red skies, loud gales where all is sadness, 
Signs of their prey, and heard triumphant paeans ; 

Till, following ever on the ancient trail, 
A thousand times girdling the pied earth's rind. . . 
Could it be they, whose dim foredeeds avail 
To urge us westward with this longing blind ? 



But if this height full many a time was trod 
By antique men facing the beckoning west, 
Were there not some whose naked feet were shod 
With wings ideal ? — on whose dull hairy breast 

Weighed all this life-long misery of a crawling? 
Who sighed for change and in each coarse limb 

yearned, 
For wind, for space, for more light dumbly calling — 
Watching the stars, proudly the flat earth spurned ? 

Such if there were, like to an ant with wings 
That soars scarce once, but, being hatched in the 

mud, 
Hastes to the earth and off her pinions flings, 
Back they did plunge, ay, back to the old wildwood ! 

12 



266 Hesperus. 

How many aeons more ? Shall thousand races 
Like individuals live, die, wake and sleep ? 
Once more a thousand times shall all the faces 
Of earth perceive the human myriads creep, 

Before man's shoulders have put forth their wings, 
Before man's brain, remembering and forgetting — 
Pure force the senses are no more besetting — 
Shall grow to a bird that without discord sings ? 

Why, the old Gauls esteemed this frame a raiment 
Round deathless souls, and the brave heathen loaned 
His coin and cattle 'gainst an actual payment 
In some new land beyond his burial mound ! 



What if it now were true ? The dull earth spurning 
Perhaps we too while gazing on yon gold 
Shall through these eyes behold the red sky turning 
To gray and know our last day by has rolled ; 

Then when the body will no more obey, 
Why shall we not — a mist, a shade, a thought — 
Finding death's pruning-knife great fruit has brought, 
Wing westward still after the flying day ? 

We may not speak to mortal friends or foes, 
Nor shall we care so to infringe that Plan : 



Hesperus. 267 

Mysteries obscure and wonders we shall scan 
Wrapped in divine, ineffable repose. 



Are not the pleasures of the growing boy 
Thrice those of infants ? and when mind gains sway 
O'er matter does not an intenser joy 
Break on the student as the kneaded clay 

Of his five wits grows finer in the straining ? 
So at the last, when in the slow machine 
Of brain and body there's no heat remaining, 
Shall not the engineer desert the scene ? 

O, to sweep on across the windy mountains, 
Study all lands, oceans and woods and airs, 
Search every river to its tiny fountains, 
Track men of guile through their fine-spun affairs ! 



Deaf to its roar are those who make their home 
Where sheer Niagara jars the primeval rock. 
Let them but go and come : the awful boom 
Strikes on their new-born ears with thunderous shock ! 

Blind are these eyes, except they note some 
change — 



268 Hesperus. 

They cannot see, until by contrasts taught ; 
Then how obtuse, how narrow in their range 
Are human senses and is human thought ! 

But, — when the trammels fall ! what sights, sounds, 
tastes, 
Globed in our perfect and unfettered minds, 
Shall greet us then ! Silent and moveless wastes 
May sound with anthems mightier than the wind's. 

What time the mullein, rising from her ashes, 
Builds from the dry heart of her crumpled leaves 
A gold-tipped campanile till it flashes 
Like the famed bird that, dying, life receives — 

Then to review the scenes of earthly bliss ! 
To launch in thought again upon the stream 
Of summery passion, where the sigh and kiss 
Each other's sweetness to enhance did seem — 

Kiss like those fresh gold blossoms, and the sigh 
Like this brown wreath of winter-bitten leaves : — 
Shall we not smile, rehearsing words gone by, 
Wise, far too wise, to dwell on that which grieves ? 



Hesperus. 269 

Some one foreknew the desperate heart of man 
When stars and moon and the bright northern sky, 
Obedient to a Sun-of-suns, began 
Through the dark night the name of Light to cry : 

A fly's love-lantern to the swamp is pledge 
That somewhere dwells a midmost soul of flame ; 
Through the black storm a sword of dazzling edge 
Flashes a hope and scores an eternal name : 

And since the night forms but a lovely version 
Of glorious day, different but no less real — 
Mortal, look up ! so shall this clay's dispersion 
Prove but the step into a life ideal. 



Through the courtesy of the editors of Lippineott 's 
and Scribners Magazines, and of The Penn Monthly, 
some of these poems are now reprinted. The greater 
part appear for the first time. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

Poems Out of Town i 

Peace 3 

Song 4 

With Life — Hope. 6 

Song for Winter 8 

Ode to Winter 10 

The Wintry Alphabet 12 

The Last Pine 14 

The Moth 17 

Robber Blueback iS 

Song for Spring 20 

Wood Laurel 23 

To Silver Lake 26 

On Great South Bay 27 

The Whippoorwill 29 

The Tornado 32 

Arcana Sylvarum 35 

On Revisiting Staten Island 



274 Table of Contents. 



PAGE 



Swallow-Fledge 40 

Autumn Views 41 

Eternal Summer 42 

Autumnal Overthrow 43 

In Autumn 45 

Saws 47 

At Sandy Hook 48 

Season Poems. 

I. The Winter Elf 50 

II. Spring Asks 54 

III. Summer Answers 59 

IV. Autumn and Fall 63 

Longings 68 

Fate 70 

Poems in Town 7 i 

Dawn in the City 73 

New York, July, 1863 76 

The Witnesses 78 

A Betrothal 81 

To A Dance Measure, November, 1876 83 

Spring in the City 85 

Goats 88 

Friendship 89 

Some People Have Luck 9 1 

Housekeeping 94 

The Week 9 6 

On A Fire-fly seen in Town 97 



Table of Contents. 275 



PAGE 



Of a Poet in Town 105 

Two Maidens 107 

Song from " Single-Sculls " 108 

In Central Park no 

May, 1874 112 

Poems of Other Lands n 3 

An Arab? 115 

The Bride Repentant 117 

The Sisters of Finisterre 119 

The Four Kon ans 121 

Ulf iN Ireland 130 

The Maid of the Beni Yezid 135 

The Gallic Herakles 139 

On the Mythstone at Grutli 141 

Amatory I43 

Hist ! 145 

The Tall Wheat 146 

In the Green Woods 147 

Prelude for the Harp 148 

Madrigal 150 

Invocation 152 

Song 154 

Song for Wet Weather 155 

The Blush 156 

Blue Iris 157 

Song 158 



276 Table of Contents. 



PAGE 

Fingers 159 

In Praise of Love 161 

Serenade 164 

For Many Leaves 166 

A Spell 167 

Magnolia 169 

A Sonata of Beethoven 171 

Miscellaneous i 77 

Smoke , 179 

The Piping Shepherd 183 

Goethe to the Germans 186 

Diogenes on Alexander 188 

Young Men's Fancies 189 

Surrender 192 

Truth 194 

The Commonplace 196 

Boozy Little Bat 197 

The Sea Sprite 200 

Little People 203 

Fairy Logic 204 

Weeping Willows 206 

Self Measurement 208 

Life's Epilogue 209 

The Vision of Indian Clove 213 

The Seer 229 

The Two Giants 247 

Hesperus 261 



